Read The Glory Online

Authors: Herman Wouk

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Jewish, #World Literature, #Historical Fiction

The Glory

BOOK: The Glory
8.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Copyright © 1994 by Herman Wouk

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: June 2002

Little Brown and Company and the logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group

The Glory
is a work of fiction set in a background of history. Israeli and other public personages both living and dead appear in the
story under their right names. Their portraits are offered as essentially truthful, though scenes and dialogue involving them
with fictitious characters are of course invented. Any other usage of real people’s names is coincidental. Any resemblance
of the imaginary characters to actual persons living or dead is unintended and fortuitous. The simplified map, of a region
much subject to clouded boundary disputes, is intended only to illustrate the narrative. Further clarification of certain
distinctions between fact and fancy appears in the Historical Notes at the end of this volume.

ISBN: 978-0-316-06889-5

Contents

Copyright Page

Preface to the New Edition

Leading Characters

Prologue

PART ONE: The Dreamers

1: The Cousins Berkowitz

2: The Telephone Call

3: Reprisal

4: Two Little Words

5: Golda

6: The Test

7: The Shocks

8: Noah Departs

9: The Wild West Show

10: Spécialité de la Maison

11: The Dogfight

12: Lost Victory

13: Shayna’s Wedding

14: The Raid

15: The Big Parade

16: The Concepzia

17: Rumbles

PART TWO: The Awakening

18: Earthquake

19: Fathers and Sons

20: The Third Temple Is Falling

21: We’ll Break Their Bones

22: The Black Panther

23: Kissinger

24: The Fork in the Road

25: Everything That Can Fly

26: That Crazy Bridge

27: The Crossing

28: Sharon Halted

29: Goodbye to Glory

30: The Bridge Arrives

31: Golda and Kissinger

32: Nakhama and Emily

33: Beaten-Out Willows

PART THREE: The Peace

34: Amos and Madame Fleg

35: “We Unbelievers”

36: Shayna and Kishote

37: The Challenge

38: Why Dov Died

39: The Peacemaker

40: Moshe

41: Doomsday

Epilogue: “And He Shall Reign”

Historical Notes

Praise for Herman Wouk’s epic saga of Israel’s founding and struggle to survive

The Hope

“Heroic storytelling. … Wouk’s fictional characters humanize history.”

—Washington Post Book World

“It was given to Wouk, probably by the spirit of Tolstoy, to provide us in
The Winds of War
and
War and Remembrance
with the most convincing fictional transformation of World War II. He has done the same thing here for the struggles of the
infant state of Israel. …
The Hope
is moving, informative, ultimately a glorification of man’s possibilities. It is in this new country of Israel — where the
values of the citizen are the values of the family, where the soldier is also a scholar — that modern man has the most hope.
The title is apt, the book is magnificent.”

— Anthony Burgess

“Herman Wouk is a master of the historical novel.”

—Los Angeles Times

The Glory

“Superb. … A stirring novel of a brave period and place. … There is historical scope in
The Glory
that conveys indelibly the sense of history that dignifies the past and sustains the present.”

—Washington Times

“Wouk long ago proved his skill at the delicate balancing act which is the historical novel. … He has said that his mission
in writing
The Hope
and
The Glory
is to give ‘a vivid sense of what it was like to live in that embattled little land’ when these historical events were taking
place: he accomplishes what he set out to do, and earns the fireworks that grace his final pages.”

—Erica Wagner, The Times
(London)

Books by Herman Wouk

Novels

AURORA DAWN

CITY BOY

THE CAINE MUTINY

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR

YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE

DON’T STOP THE CARNIVAL

THE WINDS OF WAR

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE

INSIDE, OUTSIDE

THE HOPE

THE GLORY

Plays

THE TRAITOR

THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL

NATURES WAY

Nonfiction

THIS IS MY GOD

THE WILL TO LIVE ON

To

THE ISRAELIS

Valorous in War

Generous in Peace

Above All to Those Who Fell

To Save the Land

Preface to the New Edition

The Glory
is in essence the historical novel that I first set out to write, about the beginnings of the reborn Jewish State in the
Holy Land. The Yom Kippur War of 1973, I thought, epitomized the drama of Israel’s struggle to live on: the surprise two-front
attack on its most sacred day, the Russian superpower’s grim backing of the Arab assault, the uphill fight against huge odds
in manpower and arms, and the stunning turnaround victory that broke the encircling Arab front and brought a peace treaty
with Egypt.

Mortal combat on the battlefield, high drama in the diplomatic arena, just the substance for a historical novel; that was
how I presented my project to an old Israeli friend, a retired major general who had known command in the field and advocacy
in Washington. He heard me out, then commented with weary good will, “Don’t try to do it in one war. It’s a hundred-year story.”

He was partly right. I did have to write an entire novel of equal length,
The Hope
, to set the stage of the Yom Kippur drama.

There is really no understanding Israel’s formative years — or even the current violence as I write, in March 2002 — without
factoring in the hostility to the Jewish State of the now-defunct Soviet Union, especially after the Six-Day War of 1967.
If not for Russia’s implacable fight at the United Nations to cancel and even reverse the outcome of that astounding victory,
the history of the Middle East might have taken a different course. The region might now be at peace.

The first hundred pages of
The Glory
throw a clear light on what happened then. The United States and Israel agreed to hard-fought exact wording of a U.N. resolution
calling for withdrawal of all parties
from territories occupied during the war
. Kosygin tried and failed to insert what he referred to as two little words, i.e.,
from
ALL THE
territories occupied during the war
. The harsh showdown between Lyndon Johnson and Alexsey Kosygin over the “two little words” embodies the crux of that era.
Those “two little words” are current coin in journalism, even as they climax my hundred pages. With the all-out backing of
the Soviet Union, the Arab nations were emboldened to fight on to eradicate Israel, and the signal of that decision was the
battle scene that opens
The Glory
, the sinking of the destroyer
Eilat
during the armistice that ended the war.

Part of the fascination of the Yom Kippur War — and I confess to a fascination with that seesaw conflict on the battlefield
and in the corridors of power, with its ramifications through Moscow, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Washington — part of the fascination,
I say, lies in the figure of the Egyptian leader, Anwar Sadat. Arguably the greatest Arab of modern times, Sadat planned and
executed the surprise attack with canny brilliance, then journeyed to Jerusalem to make peace with Israel. Golda Meir, when
asked who was the hero of the war, sharply rejoined, “Sadat! He dared.” Egypt still celebrates the day Sadat’s war started,
naming bridges, avenues, and monuments “October 6th.”

During my years of research, much of it done in Israel, I was asked innumerable times, “How will you end the story?” For the
end was not in sight when I started my work in the 1980s, any more than it is today in 2002. The illusory Oslo “peace process”
has foundered. In the changed world scene after the horrific events of September 11, Israel still contends with ongoing terrorist
incursions and stands alert against missile threats from a distance. Yet world perceptions of Israel’s long struggle with
the global evil of terrorism has been changing. I see hope for both sides in this change; and as for glory, Israel’s history
demonstrates how readily it will trade battlefield glory for true peace, as it did with Anwar Sadat.

The history of the military and diplomatic struggles in
The Hope
and
The Glory
is offered as accurate, based on years of arduous research. Where imaginary figures take part in actual historical scenes,
the Historical Notes in the back of each volume clarify what is real and what invented. A wise old Israeli, who helped me
greatly in my research, exclaimed on reading some early chapters, “Oh, you’re not going to make it an army story, are you?
There’s so much more to Israel than the army!” True enough. But life and death for Israel in those days hung on the army and
on the diplomats. A simple rule for the reader to bear in mind is this: aside from the four fictitious protagonists, Israeli
political figures, diplomatic characters, and military persons of the rank of lieutenant colonel and above are real people
of the time.

Herman Wouk

March 2002

Leading Characters

The Barak (Berkowitz) family

Z
EV
B
ARAK
, born in Vienna, name Hebraized from Wolfgang Berkowitz. Army field officer, military emissary to America, later military
attaché in Washington

Nakhama, his wife

Noah, his son, in love with Daphna Luria

Galia, his daughter

Ruti, his daughter

John Barkowe (Berkowitz), nickname Jackie (“Dzecki”). American cousin of Noah, making aliya. In love with Daphna Luria

Leon Barkowe, his father

Bessie Barkowe, his mother

Michael Berkowitz, Zev’s religious brother, a scientist

Lena Berkowitz, Michael’s irreligious wife

Reuven, their son

Julia Levinson, French girl, later Noah’s wife

The Pasternak family

S
AM
P
ASTERNAK
, born in Czechoslovakia. Kibbutznik, combat officer, later in military procurement and the Mossad

Amos, his son

The Luria family

B
ENNY
L
URIA
, Sabra, born in Moshe Dayan’s moshav. Air Force commander

Irit, his wife

Yael, his sister (Yossi Nitzan’s wife)

Daphna, his daughter

Dov, his son

Danny, his son

Nitzan (Blumenthal) family

Y
OSSI
N
ITZAN
, combat officer, born Joseph Blumenthal in Poland (nickname Don Kishote)

Yael (Luria) Nitzan, his wife

Aryeh, their son

Leopold, Yossi’s brother (emigrates from Israel to America, changes name to Lee Bloom)

Shayna Matisdorf, Yossi’s first love, later marries Michael Berkowitz

The Cunningham family (American)

C
HRISTIAN
C
UNNINGHAM
, a CIA officer

Emily, his daughter

Bradford Halliday, army officer, Emily’s husband

Prologue

The world is stunned. The eternal victims of history, the Jews, have risen in a single generation from the ashes of the Holocaust
to win, in six swift days of June 1967, the greatest military victory since the Second World War
.

In the West the media stammer astonished admiration. In Communist and Arab countries they rage against aggressive Israel and
claim that American carrier planes took part in the air strikes. In the United Nations the Soviet Union leads a bitter fight
to reverse the victory politically and force the Israelis back behind the old armistice lines of 1949. But various withdrawal
proposals worked up by the Russians and the Americans are rejected one after another by the Arab governments, who in August
have met in the capital of the Sudan and issued the Khartoum Declaration, embodying irrevocable
NO’S

NO
negotiation with Israel,
NO
recognition of Israel,
NO
peace with Israel.

BOOK: The Glory
8.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Outrageous Debutante by Anne O'Brien
Joy Takes Flight by Bonnie Leon
The Man In The Wind by Wise, Sorenna
Doomed by Tracy Deebs
Ms. Match by Jo Leigh