Description

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW O’HAGAN

In the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men. Then he shot them in cold blood. For those murders Gilmore was sent to languish on Death Row – and could confidently expect his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment. In America, no one had been executed for ten years.

But Gary Gilmore wanted to die, and his ensuing battle with the authorities for the right to do so made him into a world-wide celebrity – and ensured that his execution turned into the most gruesome media event of the decade.

Publisher Review

A great writer: in the utterly enthralling story of Gary Gilmore's life and crimes Norman Mailer takes one as deeply into the criminal mind as it is possible to get * Alan Sillitoe * A deeply unsettling account of a particular ordeal that suggests larger questions: the moralities of power's ends and means, the character of revolutionary fanaticism and the indecipherable humanity that flickers within it...by turns evocative, wise and crisscrossed by fury * New York Times Book Review * His greatest work was his 1979 epic The Executioner's Song... a masterpiece of reportage, fiction and stylistic writing * Observer *