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The Executioner's Song (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)
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The Executioner's Song (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) Unknown - 1998

by Norman Mailer


About this book

This novel is noteworthy for its portrayal of Gary Gilmore, a violent product of America's prisons who became known for two reasons: first for robbing and murdering two men in 1976, and second, after being tried and convicted, he insisting on dying for his crime. In order to do so, he had to fight a system that seemed ironically intent to keep him alive. The Executioner’s Song is a Pulitzer Prize-winning true crime novel.

From the publisher

"The big book no one but Mailer could have dared...absolutely astonishing". -- Joan Didion, The New York Times Book Review

In what is arguably his greatest book, written in 1979, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's prisons who -- after robbing two men and killing them in cold blood -- insisted on dying for his crime. To do so, he had to fight a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.

Norman Mailer tells Gilmore's story -- and those of the men and women caught up in his procession toward the firing squad -- with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscapes and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The Executioner's Song is a towering achievement, impossible to put down, impossible to forget.

"Literature of the highest order". -- Miami Herald

"A harrowing account...elevated by Mailer's genius into art". -- Houston Chronicle

First Edition Identification

This book was first published by Little, Brown & Company in 1979. This book is in hardcover format with 1,056 pages. 

Published in London by Hutchinson and Co in 1979, this edition has original blue cloth, titles to the spine in silver and copper, with yellow endpapers. 

Details

  • Title The Executioner's Song (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)
  • Author Norman Mailer
  • Binding unknown
  • Publisher Turtleback
  • Date 1998-05
  • ISBN 9780613100878