(1923– )
a US journalist and author who became famous with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead , about World War II . Many of his books are about real people and events and he won Pulitzer Prizes for The Armies of the Night (1968), about the 1967 peace march to Washington, DC, and The Executioner’s Song (1979), a novel based on facts about Gary Gilmore in prison. Mailer’s other novels include An American Dream (1965), The Prisoner of Sex (1971), Ancient Evenings (1983) and Harlot’s Ghost (1991). He has been involved in a number of liberal protest movements, e.g. against the Vietnam War .