Ancient Evenings is a novel by American author Norman Mailer. It deals with the lives of two protagonists, one young, one old, in a very alien Ancient Egypt marked by journeys by the dead, reincarnation, and violent and hyper-sexual gods and mortals in a complex combination of historical fiction, allegory, poetic flight, confession and spiritual meditation. The novel had an extremely mixed critical reception marked by a preponderance of negative reviews. William S. Burroughs acknowledged "Norman Mailer and his Ancient Evenings, for inspiration" in his 1987 novel The Western Lands.