Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize winning author who brought Orthodox Judaism into the mainstream with his non-fiction work This Is My God, has died aged 103.
The writer was perhaps best known for his 1951 work, The Caine Mutiny, about a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific during the Second World War. It received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and was subsequently adapted into a Broadway Play. It would be Hollywood, however, which brought it to a truly international audience, with the 1954 film of the same name featuring Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray.
Born in 1913 to two Jewish immigrants from what was then Russia (now Belarus), Wouk was raised Orthodox, taught by his grandfather, who emigrated from Minsk to New York when his grandson was 13.
In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Wouk joined the US Naval Reserves, serving as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers. He would participate in a number of key campaigns in the Pacific, including the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, the Battle of Luzon and the Battle of Okinawa. He would later draw on his own experiences to write two books – Aurora Dawn and later The Caine Mutiny.
A number of other works by Wouk would be turned into films or television series. His 1955 book, Marjorie Morningstar, about a young Jewish woman expected to marry well but who has dreams of being an actress, was made into a film starring Natalie Wood and Gene Kelly. Youngblood Hawke, his 1962 novel about the rise and fall in the literary sphere of a young author from Kentucky was adapted into a 1964 film by Warner Brothers. Two further novels about the Second World War – The Winds of War (1971) and a sequel, War and Remembrance (1978) - were both made into successful television miniseries.
However, it was his 1959 work, This Is My God, which summarised Orthodox Judaism for a wider audience. The book covered many key aspects of religion, including Jewish history, Shabbat and the festivals, prayer, kashrut, Torah, Israel and Zionism.
In 1944, Wouk met Betty Sarah Brown, a young Protestant lady from Idaho working as a personnel specialist in the Navy. She converted to Judaism in 1945 and they were married soon after, a marriage which would last for more than 65 years until her death in 2011. She would come to serve as his literary agent.
Wouk once described how he “wrote nothing of the slightest consequence before I met Sarah…I would say my literary career and my mature life both began with her."
Wouk died in his sleep at his home in Palm Springs on Friday at the age of 103, just ten days short of his 104th birthday. He had three children; his eldest, Abraham Isaac, drowned in a swimming pool accident at the age of four. He is survived by his children Iolanthe Woulff and Joseph Wouk, and three grandchildren.
