Based on Mailers own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two The Naked and the Dead is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle First published in 1949 as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory it altered forever the popular perception of warfareFocusing on the experiences of a fourteenman platoon stationed on a Japaneseheld island in the South Pacific during World War II and written in a journalistic style it tells the moving story of the soldiers struggle to retain a sense of dignity amidst the horror of warfare and to find a source of meaning in their lives amisdst the sounds and fury of battle
