Norman Mailer, who died on 10 November, 2007, was one of the finest American writers of the 20th century.

He was, along with the likes of Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe, one of the literary icons who would chase that most impossible of goals, the Great America Novel.

But although he came close with The Naked and the Dead (1948) and also helped pioneer the new form of the non-fiction novel, his contribution to his art was often over-shadowed by his controversial private life and combative nature.

Norman Kingsley Mailer was born on 31 January, 1923, in New Jersey. His parents were of Russian-Jewish descent, his father a South African-born accountant and his mother the daughter of a local rabbi who ran a housekeeping and nursing agency.

He was raised in Brooklyn and attended Harvard where he graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1943. By this time he had become interested in writing and had begun publishing short stories.

After leaving university he was drafted into the US Army with whom he served in the Philippines with 112th Cavalry. During the war he saw only "modest bits of action" and rose to the mediocre rank of sergeant technician (which effectively meant he was the cook), but the experience provided enough material for The Naked and the Dead.

The novel, which centred around the conflicts between officers and rank-and-file, was met with huge critical acclaim and established Mr Mailer’s reputation around the world.

He continued to tackle controversial issues with his follow-up novels, Barbary Shore (1951), an examination of Cold War politics set in Brooklyn, and The Deer Park (1955), which incorporated his experience working as a Hollywood screenwriter during this time. However, neither novel was as successful as his debut.

Unperturbed, he began writing essays and became a leading figure of the emerging counter culture of the late 1950s. He was one of the founders of New York’s Village Voice magazine in 1955 and published a devastatingly critical collection of articles in 1959 called Advertisements for Myself.

By the 1960s Mr Mailer was focussing his energies on politics. He ran for the mayorship of New York twice without success and published The Presidential Papers in 1963 in support of President Kennedy.

He continued to produce forthright and contentious essays throughout his life, tackling topics such as the Vietnam War and the death sentence. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for non-fiction novels The Armies of the Night (1968) and The Executioner's Song (1979).

He wrote several more fictional novels but critics often pointed out that it was hard to tell between his fiction and journalism, so opaque were the views he imposed on his characters. He also penned several biographical works, including one that alleged Marilyn Monroe was killed by the CIA, and produced a handful of art house films.

He was married a total of six times, had eight children (and adopted another). He died of acute renal failure in hospital in Manhattan aged 84.