The Lawgiver - Softcover

Wouk, Herman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451699395 ISBN 13: 9781451699395

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2013

Synopsis

"A lighthearted and delightful tour de force" (The Washington Times).

A romantic and suspenseful epistolary novel about a group of people trying to make a movie about Moses in the present day, The Lawgiver is a story that emerges from letters, memos, e-mails, journals, news articles, Skype transcripts, and text messages.

At the center of The Lawgiver is Margo Solovei, a brilliant young writer-director who has rejected her rabbinical father's strict Jewish upbringing to pursue a career in the arts. When an Australian multibillionaire promises to finance a movie about Moses, Margo does everything she can to land the job, including reunite with her estranged first love, an influential lawyer with whom she still has unfinished business. Two other key characters in the novel are Herman Wouk himself and his wife of more than sixty years, Betty Sarah, who, almost against their will, find themselves entangled in the movie.

As Wouk and his characters contend with Moses and marriage, the force of tradition, rebellion and reunion, The Lawgiver reflects the wisdom of a lifetime. Inspired by the great nineteenth-century novelists, one of America's most beloved twentieth-century authors has now written a remarkable twenty-first-century work of fiction.

About this title

Review:

"Honest, highly readable, entertaining."--Moment magazine

"A lighthearted and delightful tour de force."--The Washington Times

"Wouk makes commanding use of the epistolary form, and what emerges is an entertaining addition to his literary canon. It's clever without being too cutesy, revealing a writer who - at 96 - shows little sign of slowing down."--Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

"Readers will undoubtedly marvel at the ability of a ninety-seven year old author to produce a book with such an unusual format. Regardless of their opinion about the book's design, anything written by Herman Wouk is worth reading and The Lawgiver is no exception."--The Jerusalem Post

""Read this one. You'll smile all the way through."--Hudson Valley News (NY)

"An engaging comedy/love story about present-day Hollywood."--USA Today

"Mr. Wouk's satirical (and accurate) depiction of Hollywood's bizarre ins and outs is merciless."--The New York Times

"The Lawgiver is an unadulterated delight, a compelling, old-fashioned story in sleek new-fashioned clothes. How fortunate it is for readers that Mr. Wouk, who published The Caine Mutiny when I was but four years old, has not lost an iota of his storytelling genius. The Lawgiver is fast, funny, romantic, and moving."--Stephen King

"[I] n some essential way, this book about a movie about a book is also about the very act of writing books. Wouk reminds us of the eternal value of storytelling while he shows 30- and 50- and 80-year-old whippersnappers how it's done."--Washington Post

"...The Lawgiver is a combination of sweet romantic comedy and sly Hollywood satire, and it is as much fun to read as it seems to have been to write....Wouk excels in channeling distinctive voices."--The Columbus Dispatch (OH)

About the Author:

Herman Wouk was the author of such classics as The Caine Mutiny (1951), Marjorie Morningstar (1955), Youngblood Hawke (1961), Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), The Winds of War (1971), War and Remembrance (1978), and Inside, Outside (1985). His later works include The Hope (1993), The Glory (1994), A Hole in Texas (2004) and The Lawgiver (2012). Among Mr. Wouk's laurels are the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Caine Mutiny; the cover of Time magazine for Marjorie Morningstar, the bestselling novel of that year; and the cultural phenomenon of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, which he wrote over a fourteen-year period and which went on to become two of the most popular novels and TV miniseries events of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1998, he received the Guardian of Zion Award for support of Israel. In 2008, Mr. Wouk was honored with the first Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement for the Writing of Fiction. He died in 2019 at the age of 103.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1451699395
• ISBN 13: 9781451699395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240