Howard (Melvin) Fast - Biography, Works
Writer, born in New York City, New York, USA. As a professional writer after 1932, he became a leading proponent of left-wing views. He was blacklisted for a decade for his Communist Party membership (194456), but in 1957 he declared his disenchantment with the Communism of Stalin in The Naked God. He wrote novels, children's books, biographies, and plays, but was best known for his historical novels, including Freedom Road (1944), Spartacus (1952), and The Immigrants (1977). His last novel, Greenwich, appeared in 2000.
Howard Melvin Fast (November 11, 1914 – March 12, 2003) was a Jewish American novelist and television writer.
Biography
Early life
Born in New York City, his mother was a British Jewish immigrant and his father the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. Always interested in American history, he also wrote The Last Frontier, about an attempt by Cheyennes to return to their native land;
Career
Fast spent World War II working with the United States Office of War Information, writing for Voice of America.
It was while he was in jail that Fast began writing his most famous work, Spartacus, a novel about an uprising among Roman slaves.
Shortly afterward, Fast wrote April Morning, an account of the Battle of Lexington and Concord from the perspective of a fictional teenager.
In 1974, Fast and his family moved to California, where he wrote television scripts, including such television programs as How the West Was Won. In 1977, he published The Immigrants, the first of a six-part series of novels.
Fast's son Jonathan Fast, himself a novelist, was the husband of novelist Erica Jong.
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