by Herman Wouk
The 1981 air strike which destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor evoked worldwide criticism. The American government even held up deliveries of aircraft to Israel, to signal its disapproval. Ilan Ram-On, the youngest of the eight pilots who made the strike, was my source for many details. At one point I asked Ilan, who had risen to command an F-16 squadron, what he would have my book say about the attack, if he were to write it himself. He replied after a pause, very seriously, “That it took the Gulf War to prove the need and worth of the operation.”
Right on target. Only when Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles were falling on Israel, and on American troops in Saudi Arabia, were all questions answered about an exploit that deprived Iraq of nuclear warheads.
DESTRUCTION AND RESURGENCE
A final word to the readers of The Glory.
Menachem Begin once told me that when his term as Prime Minister was over, he would retire from politics to write a book about the Jewish epic of the twentieth century, which he would call Dor Hashoah V’hat’kumah, literally The Generation of the Destruction and the Resurgence, embodying both the Holocaust and the rise of Israel. The mischances and tragedies of the protracted Lebanon War overwhelmed him, and he retired into a depressed solitude and died. The book might have been a great one, but he never wrote it.
Though I have had no such conscious plan or ambition in mind, the historical novels I have written over the past thirty years — The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, The Hope, The Glory, and Inside, Outside — come near at least in scope to the scheme Menachem Begin envisioned. The Winds of War began, in fact, as a book about the Battle of Leyte Gulf; yet the art of fiction has its own strange workings. As they finally evolved, my two World War II novels tell of the Holocaust in the only way I believe that the unparalleled crime can be grasped, if never completely understood; that is, as the covert deed of an outlaw major power governed by mass murderers, and screened off too long from the rest of mankind by the fog of a global war. In The Glory and its prologue, The Hope, I have tried to limn Israel’s early heroic half century; and in Inside, Outside, a novel of the American Jewish experience during those years, I have as it were scrawled my small signature in a corner of the panorama.
These five books have occupied the central years of my working life. Their merit is for others to judge, today and in years to come, if they last. Looking back, I perceive them as a single task of bearing witness, my Generation of Destruction and Resurgence. That task is done, and I turn with a lightened spirit to fresh beckoning tasks; concluding my work on The Glory with old words often found at the close of our rabbinic commentaries, which express what is in my heart.
Finished and complete,
Praise to the Lord Eternal.
Herman Wouk
1964–1994
5724–5754
Also by Herman Wouk
The Caine Mutiny
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“A novel of brilliant virtuosity, remarkable for its finely realistic atmosphere and sharply observed characters. … So convincingly has Mr. Wouk created his officers, so subtly has he contrived the series of incidents that culminate in the final drama, that, given both the characters and the situations, the climax is perfectly acceptable. … It is fiction that all along the line throws off real problems and faces them in mature fashion.”
—Times Literary Supplement
The Winds of War
“Hypnotically readable. … Wouk is a matchless storyteller with a gift for characterization, an ear for convincing dialogue, and a masterful grasp of what was at stake in World War II.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
War and Remembrance
“Wouk’s real genius lies not just in the narrative power of his books, but in his empathy with the people and the times of which he writes. … The genius of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance is that they not only tell the story of the Holocaust, but tell it within the context of World War II, without which there is no understanding it.”
—Washington Post
Available in paperback whereever books are sold
Like no other novelist at work today, Herman Wouk has managed to capture the sweep of history in novels rich in character and alive with drama. The Glory carries forward the story of Israel’s early years, which culminated in the miraculous triumph of 1967’s Six-Day War in The Hope. As Wouk here portrays the young nation facing formidable new challenges and pushed once again to the brink of annihilation, he sets the stage for today’s ongoing pursuit of peace.
A MAGNIFICENT SAGA—ENCOMPASSING TWO NOVELS, THE HOPE AND THE GLORY—THAT BRINGS BRILLIANTLY TO LIFE THE EPIC ADVENTURE OF ISRAEL’S FOUNDING AND STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE.
Taking us from the Sinai to Jerusalem, from dust-choking battles to the Entebbe raid, from Camp David to the inner lives of such historical figures as Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and Anwar Sadat, these extraordinary novels have the authenticity and authority of Wouk’s finest fiction—and together strike a resounding chord of hope for all humanity.
“A sprawling, action-packed novel. … The Glory is gripping historical fiction. Wouk’s portraits of historical figures are altogether convincing.”
—PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
“A genuinely enjoyable read. … Wouk is a master. … The Glory is even better than The Hope, and probably is Wouk’s best work since The Winds of War.”
—DETROIT NEWS
“In this historic panorama Mr. Wouk’s skill—and his purpose—is wonderfully apparent. There is historical scope in The Glory that conveys indelibly the sense of history that dignifies the past and sustains the present.”
—WASHINGTON TIMES
Herman Wouk’s acclaimed novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Caine Mutiny; Marjorie Morningstar; Don’t Stop the Carnival; Youngblood Hawke; The Winds of War; War and Remembrance; Inside, Outside; The Hope; and The Glory.
* Jeptha: special unit of army engineers who design and build matériel for Zahal’s unique needs. (back to text)