Norman Mailer — writer with roots in the Russian Empire
Norman Mailer was one of American literature's most combative, brilliant, and prolific figures — the author of The Naked and the Dead, The Armies of the Night, The Executioner's Song, and dozens more. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, co-founded the Village Voice, and ran for Mayor of New York City.
Tracing the roots — Lithuania (Russian Empire)
Born in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1923 to Isaac Barnett Mailer, whose family had emigrated from Lithuania (Russian Empire), and Fanny Schneider, Mailer grew up in Brooklyn's Jewish immigrant world. The aggressive intellectual ambition, the combativeness, the need to be the centre of every room — these were products of an immigrant family's hunger to matter in America.
.svg?width=900)
Lithuania (Russian Empire). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less."