Hersey, John Richard

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

(hûr´sē), 1914–93, American author, b. China, grad. Yale, 1936. Reflecting his experiences as a war correspondent in World War II, many of his writings are concerned with the problem of intolerance and inhumanity. His first novel, A Bell for Adano (1944; Pulitzer Prize), depicts the American occupation of a rural town in war-torn Italy. Later novels include The Wall (1950), about the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis; The War Lover (1959); The Child Buyer (1960); Letter to the Alumni (1970); The Conspiracy (1972); and Antonietta (1991). His nonfiction works include Hiroshima (1946), a powerful report of the effects of atomic bombing; The Algiers Motel Incident (1968), concerning an occurrence in the 1967 Detroit race riot; and Blues (1987), about fishing. Collections of his short stories include Fling and Other Stories (1990) and his last, Key West Tales (1994).

See studies by D. Sanders (1967) and N. L. Huse (1983).