Name William Herrick | Role Novelist | |
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Died 2004, Old Chatham, New York, United States Books Jumping the Line: The Adve, Hermanos!: A Novel, Love and Terror: A Novel, Shadows and wolves, Kill memory | ||
William Herrick (Trenton, NJ, January 10, 1915 – Old Chatham, NY, January 31, 2004) was an American novelist, sometimes referred to as "an American Orwell".
Biography
Herrick was born to Jewish parents who had come to the United States from Belarus and settled in Trenton, New Jersey. Herrick was among the Abraham Lincoln Brigade which fought Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. Drawing on that experience he wrote Hermanos! (1969), a novel about the war itself, and another novel set in Spain, Shadows and Wolves (1980), about the post-Franco period. He left the American Communist Party over the Hitler–Stalin non-aggression pact in 1939 and criticised the Brigade as willing accomplices of the Communist secret police, who were killing off anyone who criticized the Party.
Two other novels touch on his experience in Spain: Love and Terror (1981) and Kill Memory (1983). His autobiography is entitled Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures of an American Radical (1998).