Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer was hospitalized last weekend with breathing difficulties, but has since returned to his Provincetown, Mass., home, according to his editorial assistant.

Mailer, 84, considered one of the pioneers of creative non-fiction, has been told not to travel without first consulting his doctors, Dwayne Raymond Prickett said Thursday.

Norman Mailer, seen in 2006, cancelled two speaking engagements because of health problems.
(Associated Press)

Mailer, who suffers from adult onset asthma, spent five days in a Boston hospital with laboured breathing and underwent a series of tests, Prickett said.

"There's not really any need for alarm," Prickett said.

Two public readings, scheduled for Sept. 25 and Sept. 27, have been cancelled.

Author of novels, short stories and non-fiction, Mailer first gained fame in 1948 for his novel The Naked and the Dead, based on his experiences as an infantryman in the Second World War.

He won two Pulitzer Prizes, for 1969's Armies of the Night about the Vietnam War protests and 1980's The Executioner's Song, about Utah murderer Gary Gilmore.

His most recent book, The Castle in the Forest, about the young Adolf Hitler, was published earlier this year.

With files from the Associated Press