Norman Mailer's character timeline for 'Harlot's Ghost.' Click image to view larger version.

Norman Mailer was among the most prominent cultural and literary figures in late twentieth-century America. His talent as a writer was apparent early in his career; he received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his debut novel, The Naked and the Dead, which was published in 1948 when he was only 25 years old. In the 1950s Mailer began publishing commentary about such topics as race, feminism, sexuality, politics, literature, art, culture, and society, in magazines including Dissent, Esquire, Partisan Review, and The Village Voice, which he co-founded in 1955.

Norman Mailer’s 1991 novel, Harlot’s Ghost, is a sprawling, 1,300-page chronicle of the Central Intelligence Agency that blends both fictional…