Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon

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Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, first published in 2000 and written by New York journalist Robert Rosen, who in 1981 had access to Lennon’s diaries, is a controversial account of the ex-Beatle’s last five years. The book disputes the official view of Lennon as a contented househusband raising his son Sean and baking bread while Yoko ran the family business. Instead, Nowhere Man portrays Lennon’s daily life at the Dakota as that of a "tormented superstar, a prisoner of his fame, locked in his bedroom raving about Jesus Christ, while a retinue of servants tended to his every need."

The final part of the book, The Coda, focuses on the mental disintegration of Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, and includes Chapter 27, the so-called missing chapter of J.D. Salinger’s classic novel of disaffected youth, The Catcher in the Rye, that "inspired" Chapman to murder Lennon. It was Chapman’s goal, according to Rosen, to write Chapter 27 "in Lennon’s blood."

Nowhere Man was a minor bestseller in the United States (Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2000), England (Mojo, October 2000), and Japan (Amazon.co.jp, October 2000). But the book became a media phenomenon in Latin America when Random House Mondadori brought out a Spanish-language edition in 2003. Extensive coverage and major excerpts in such publications as Proceso [1], La Jornada [2], El Universal [3], Reforma, Semana, Gatopardo, Soho [4], El Mercurio, Las Últimas Noticias [5], and The Clinic propelled Nowhere Man to bestseller status in Mexico and Colombia, and a complete sell-out in Chile.