Robert Wernick (1918-2014) was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard, and became a Paris-based journalist for the International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Life, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar, among many others publications. He wrote five novels, including The Freebooters and The Hill of Fortune, and many non-fiction titles. He was married to the painter Marion McClanahan, and counted artists like Salvador Dali and sculptor Alberto Giacometti among his friends.
A long-lost, World War II literary classic in the dark, satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, though it pre-dated those landmark novels by decades. When The Freebooters was released in 1949, it was greeted with widespread acclaim, the San Francisco Chronicle declaring it “the best American war novel to arise so far.” Now it’s finally back in print.