Herman Wouk

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.