An edition of Oswald's Tale: an American mystery (1995)

Oswald's tale

an American mystery

1st trade ed.
  • 6 Want to read
  • 2 Have read

My Reading Lists:

Create a new list

Check-In

×Close
Add an optional check-in date. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals.
Today

  • 6 Want to read
  • 2 Have read

Buy this book

Last edited by MARC Bot
July 16, 2024 | History
An edition of Oswald's Tale: an American mystery (1995)

Oswald's tale

an American mystery

1st trade ed.
  • 6 Want to read
  • 2 Have read

In this book, Norman Mailer asks the essential question about the assassination of JFK: not "Who killed Kennedy?" but "Who was Oswald?" for only by answering the latter question can we hope to answer the first. In 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union and was sent to Minsk, where he lived for two and a half years and remained under constant KGB surveillance, on suspicion of being a CIA agent.

In 1993, Norman Mailer spent six months in Russia, where he interviewed Oswald's former friends and sweethearts and obtained exclusive interviews with the KGB officers assigned to monitor Oswald's every move. He was also given exclusive access to the KGB files on Oswald, including transcripts of conversations overheard in the apartment that Lee shared with his Russian wife, Marina.

.

In Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, Mailer reconstructs the life of this ambitious if doom-laden young man, giving a full account for the first time not only of the Minsk years, a hitherto uncharted period in Oswald's life, but also of Oswald's disastrous childhood, his years in the Marine Corps, and the events leading from his return to the United States in 1961 to his death in Dallas in 1963.

The portrait of Oswald that emerges will greatly surprise readers who have thought of Oswald as a hapless loner: socially awkward, inarticulate, and an unremarkable loser.

Publish Date
Publisher
Random House
Language
English
Pages
791

Buy this book

Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Oswald's Tale
Oswald's Tale
2007, Random House Publishing Group
E-book in English
Cover of: Oswald's tale
Oswald's tale: an American mystery
2007, Random House Trade Paperbacks
in English - Random House trade pbk. ed.
Cover of: Oswald's Tale
Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
January 23, 2007, Random House Trade Paperbacks
Paperback in English
Cover of: Oswald's Tale
Oswald's Tale
November 25, 1997, Random House Value Publishing
Hardcover in English
Cover of: Oswald's Tale
Oswald's Tale
June 16, 1996, Random House Value Publishing
Hardcover in English
Cover of: Oswald's Tale
Oswald's Tale
1995, Random House, 1995
Hardcover
Cover of: Oswald's tale
Oswald's tale: an American mystery
1995, Franklin Library
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: Oswald's tale
Oswald's tale: an American mystery
1995, Random House
in English - 1st trade ed.
Cover of: Oswald's tale
Oswald's tale: an American mystery
1995, Little, Brown and Company
in English

Add another edition?

Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxxvi]-xxxvii).

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
364.1/524/092
Library of Congress
E842.9 .M275 1995, E842.9.M275 1995

The Physical Object

Pagination
791 p., xxxvii ;
Number of pages
791

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL818124M
Internet Archive
oswaldstaleameri00mail
ISBN 10
0679425357
LCCN
95067920
OCLC/WorldCat
32359138
Library Thing
110765
Goodreads
1681216

Work Description

"MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING."--The New York Times Book Review"MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination through the flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notably by Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. But neither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literary imagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . . Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy's death but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one that remains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lack of resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-life than any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . Vintage Mailer."--The Philadelphia Inquirer"FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us our clearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages you are utterly absorbed."--Detroit Free Press"MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . . EXTREMELY LUCID . . . Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . [He] has found a way to make the dry bones of KGB tapes and his own interviews stand up and perform. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."--Robert Stone The New York Review of Books"THIS IS A NARRATIVE OF TREMENDOUS ENERGY AND PANACHE; THE AUTHOR AT THE TOP OF HIS FORM."--Christopher Hitchens Financial Times"Mailer has written some pretty crazy books in his time, but this isn't one of them. Like its predecessor, Harlot's Ghost, it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."--Martin Amis The London Sunday TimesFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

Community Reviews (0)

Feedback?
No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
July 16, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
March 8, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
November 20, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
October 12, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record