A self-proclaimed philosophical "existentialist" and political "left conservative," Norman Mailer was inducted into the United States Army in 1944 and served in the Philippines. He recounted his experiences there in his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, which gained much critical and popular acclaim. In the introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of the novel, Mailer contends that "it came out at exactly the right time when, near to three years after the Second World War ended, everyone was ready for a big war novel that gave some idea of what it had all been like."

Most reviewers deemed the novel to be one of the best war stories ever written, praising Mailer's realistic depiction of men at war.

The novel focuses on the adventures of a fourteen-man infantry platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in the South Pacific during World War II. In the course of...