The Executioner's Song

If you were enthralled by Capote's In Cold Blood, read The Executioner's SongWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW O'HAGANIn the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men. Then he shot them in cold blood. For those murders Gilmore was sent to languish on Death Row - and could confidently expect his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment. In America, no one had been executed for ten years.But Gary Gilmore wanted to die, and his ensuing battle with the authorities for the right to do so made him into a world-wide celebrity - and ensured that his execution turned into the most gruesome media event of the decade.

Winner of Pulitzer Prize Novel Category 1980
Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1980

“His greatest work was his 1979 epic The Executioner's Song ... a masterpiece of reportage, fiction and stylistic writing”

This is by far the best thing Mailer ever wrote New Statesman, Books of the Year
His greatest work was his 1979 epic The Executioner's Song… a masterpiece of reportage, fiction and stylistic writing Observer
A deeply unsettling account of a particular ordeal that suggests larger questions: the moralities of power's ends and means, the character of revolutionary fanaticism and the indecipherable humanity that flickers within it...by turns evocative, wise and crisscrossed by fury New York Times Book Review
A great writer: in the utterly enthralling story of Gary Gilmore's life and crimes Norman Mailer takes one as deeply into the criminal mind as it is possible to get Alan Sillitoe

Norman Mailer was born in New Jersey in January 1923 and after graduating from Harvard, served in the US army from 1944-1946. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published to immediate critical acclaim in 1948 - and was hailed by Anthony Burgess as 'the best war novel to emerge from the United States'.He went on to publish both fiction and non-fiction, his books including Barbary Shore (1951), Advertisements for Myself (1959), The Presidential Papers (1963), An American Dream (1964), Armies of the Night (1968), Ancient Evenings (1983), and Tough Guys Don't Dance (1983). The Executioner's Song, first published in 1979, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 - an award which Mailer won twice during his writing career.Norman Mailer died in November 2007.

With a new introduction by Andrew O'Hagan 'A great writer ... an utterly enthralling story'. Alan Sillitoe In the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men and shot them in cold blood. Sent to death row, he could confidently expect his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment - no-one had been executed in America for ten years. But Gilmore wanted to die, and his ensuing battle with the authorities for his right to do so turned his execution into the most gruesome media event of the decade. 'Such a wealth of imagery and adventure ... it is indeed that rare thing, a classic'. John le Carre See also: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver

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