WOUK, HERMAN

born May 27, 1915, New York City U.S. 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. Wouk's novels are 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), the purity of women, and revolve around moral dilemmas. Wouk wrote with little technical innovation, but his novels have been tremendously popular. Most have been made into screenplays. Popular television mini-series were based on his expansive two-volume historical novel set in World War II: The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978).