Herman Wouk

Herman Wouk, CC 1934, will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece The Caine Mutiny, with a reading at Rennert Hall in the Kraft Center for Jewish Life at Columbia University on September 13 at 6:00 p.m..

Originally published in 1951, The Caine Mutiny has sold millions of copies and become a classic novel of World War II. It tells the story of the USS Caine under the command of Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, a neurotic captain who loses control of his ship during a typhoon. The ensuing court martial of mutineer Lieutenant Steve Maryk raises questions of loyalty, patriotism and adherence to military code. Upon publication, The Caine Mutiny captured the imagination of a country recovering from a devastating war. "The Caine Mutiny" starring Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg was filmed in 1954, the same year that "The Caine Mutiny Court- Martial," Wouk's two-act play based on the novel, was produced on Broadway.

Wouk himself served aboard two destroyer-minesweepers, the USS Zane and the USS Southhard, from 1942 to 1946. His other works of fiction chronicling the global drama of World War II, The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978), have also become a vital part of our literary history and have been made into television movies.

Herman Wouk's other works include Marjorie Morningstar (1955), Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), and The Hope (1994) and The Glory (1994), his historical novels of the creation and early development of the modern state of Israel.

Many of Wouk's papers are now held by Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. A small selection of material relating to TheCaine Mutiny, including the play about USS Zane, will be on display in the Rare Book and manuscript Library from September 13 through November 30.

The fiftieth anniversary celebration is sponsored by the Friends of the Columbia Libraries, the Stephen Whitney Phoenix Society of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia, Columbia College and Little, Brown & Company. Little Brown's paperback edition of The Caine Mutiny (Back Bay Books/Little Brown) is the only version of the novel currently in print.

The reading is free and open to the public.