Harlot's Ghost (1991), a fictional chronicle of the Central Intelligence Agency by Norman Mailer. The characters are a mixture of real people and fictional figures.
At first it appears to be the autobiography of Harry Hubbard, which is made up of anecdotes of his adventures in the CIA. The very beginning of the book starts with Harry being told by a friend that his mentor Hugh Montague has either been assassinated or committed suicide on his boat. He then is told by his wife, Kittredge, that she has been unfaithful and is in love with another man. Emotionally worn, he goes to Russia. It is there that he rereads the dense manuscript of his life at the CIA, whose working title is "The Game". At that point, the book really begins. The rest of the book follows his relationship with his father, his lover, Kittredge, and other people with whom he worked.
The book ends in 1984 with the words "To be continued."
Although the novel was unfavorably received by most critics (e.g., Louis Menand, John Simon), a distinguished minority (e.g., Christopher Hitchens, Anthony Burgess, Wilfrid Sheed, Salman Rushdie, Michael Silverblatt and John W. Aldridge), considered it among Mailer's finest fictions, if not, as in the cases of Aldridge and Hitchens, his masterwork.
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