Author Norman Mailer dies at 84

Obituary: Norman Mailer Mailer's life in pictures

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer has died of renal failure aged 84, his literary executor has said.

Mailer won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Armies of the Night in 1968 and The Executioner's Song in 1979.

He was known for biting prose and as an antagonist of the feminist movement. His latest work, The Castle in the Forest, was published this year.

Last month he had surgery to remove scar tissue from around his lung.

Born in 1923 in New Jersey, Mailer wrote dozens of books as well as plays, poems, screenplays and essays.

His strident views on US political life, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, provoked and enraged readers.

Mailer's first major success, the 1948 novel The Naked and the Dead, was a fictionalised account based on his experiences in the Army in World War II.

HAVE YOUR SAY His many poor judgements were counterbalanced by a bullish resistance to intellectual homogeneity (a feature of our beleagured times). We need more like him. David Bell, Sunderland Send us your comments

"A man who went to a famous prep school in the early 1920s said afterward, 'It was the worst experience of my life and the most valuable.' I can say the same about my time in the US Army," he reflected in 2005.

Mailer's works were often filled with violence, sexual obsession and views that angered feminists.

Married six times and the father of nine children, Mailer once said in an NBC television interview that he was worried "women are going to take over the world".

Detractors considered him an intellectual bully and he feuded with fellow authors including Truman Capote, William Styron, Tom Wolfe and Norman Podhoretz.

In later life he reconsidered many of his old positions but never surrendered his right to speak his mind.

Mailer was also co-founder of The Village Voice alternative newspaper in New York.