Herman Wouk
(born May 27, 1915,
Bronx
,
New York
, U.S.?died May 17, 2019,
Palm Springs
, California) was an American novelist best known for his epic war novels.
During
World War II
Wouk served in the Pacific aboard the destroyer-minesweeper
Zane
. One of his best-known novels,
The Caine Mutiny
(1951), grew out of these years. This drama of naval tradition presented the unforgettable character
Captain Queeg
and won the
Pulitzer Prize
for fiction in 1952. It was later made into an acclaimed
film
(1954) starring
Humphrey Bogart
. Wouk also adapted the
novel
into the Broadway play
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
, which premiered in 1954.
Wouk’s novels were all meticulously researched, and they provide an accurate and in-depth portrait of a particular slice of the world. They are built on a belief in the goodness of man or, in the case of
Marjorie Morningstar
(1955; film 1958), the purity of women and revolve around
moral
dilemmas. Wouk wrote with little technical
innovation
, but his novels were tremendously popular. Popular television miniseries were based on his expansive two-volume
historical novel
set in World War II:
The Winds of War
(1971) and
War and Remembrance
(1978). His later novels included
A Hole in Texas
(2004) and
The Lawgiver
(2012). The
memoir
Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-old Author
was published in 2015.