At 96 years old, Herman Wouk sells a new novel, in a project spearheaded by my agent

Obviously my agent, Amy Rennert, cannot tell me a lot about what she is doing—not when she's in the run-up to a big sale, at least, or in the heat of auctions.  But today while Amy and I were talking about another confidential project (which is A okay, because it happens to be mine), she forwarded a link to something she called special.

I waited.  My email pinged.  I opened the link.  Whaaaatttt? I said.

Because, as it turns out, ninety-six-year-old Herman Wouk, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Caine Mutiny, has a new novel due out from Jonathan Karp at Simon & Schuster, a novel with Moses at its heart.  Mr. Karp and Mr. Wouk are, says Amy, no accidental pairing; in fact, Mr. Karp wrote his master's thesis on Wouk when in graduate school at New York University.

But neither are Amy and Mr. Wouk an accidental pairing.  I asked Amy for some behind-the-scenes insights.  This is what she said:

The new novel is outstanding. HW has long wanted to write a novel about Moses and in The Lawgiver he approaches the subject with great warmth, wisdom and imagination. It's a tour de force. Some of his earlier novels have long been favorites of mine—including City Boy, The Caine Mutiny (my father introduced me to it and I still have his original hardcover copy from 1951, the year it was published!) and Marjorie Morningstar—and getting to know Herman Wouk and work with him closely has been a great privilege and pleasure.    

Impressed?  I am. 

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