''Harlot's Ghost'' is a novel by

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...

, published by

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

in 1991. The book is a fictional chronicle of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. The characters are a mixture of real people and fictional figures. At over 1,300 pages, the book is Mailer's longest.

Summary

At first it appears to be the

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

of Harry Hubbard, which is made up of anecdotes of his life and actions with the CIA, covert operations in Uruguay, the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...

, the Mafia in the 60s and the assassination of JFK. The very beginning of the book starts with Harry being told by a friend that his mentor Hugh Montague (a top level CIA officer) has either been assassinated or committed suicide on his boat. He then is told by his wife, Kittredge (a CIA member), that she has been unfaithful and is in love with another high level CIA intelligence officer. Under perceived threat of his own assassination by the CIA he escapes to Moscow. It is there that he rereads in a hotel room the dense manuscript of his life at the CIA which he has documented and kept secret over his career. At that point, the book really begins. It details the life of a CIA intelligence officer who has connections to the highest levels of the CIA. It raises basic questions about the fight against Communism and goes into the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis and, perhaps most importantly, raises questions about the assassination of JFK and who was ultimately responsible. Mailer had planned to write a sequel – ''Harlot's Grave'' – but other projects intervened and the sequel was never written. ''Harlot's Ghost'' ends with the words "To be continued".

References

{{Norman Mailer, state=collapsed 1991 American novels American historical novels Novels by Norman Mailer Random House books Central Intelligence Agency in fiction