Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery is a 1995 non-fiction book by Norman Mailer, ISBN 0-679-42535-7. It amounts to a detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. The book includes an exhaustive examination of his movements in the years, and particularly in the months, leading up to Kennedy's death November 22, 1963 and Oswald's own death two days later. Knitted into the story of Oswald's life are Mailer's suppositions on his state of mind and motivations. The Oswald that Mailer depicts is a single-minded and vain individual convinced of his own destiny and importance who suffers a series of defeats and frustrations, and kills the President in a desperate search for achievement.
