Yancey's War

Yancey's War - Cover

A Novel

by William Hoffman

Voices of the South

384 pages / 5.50 x 8.50 inches / None

This title is out of print.

Declared the "best novel of the year" by the Cleveland Press when first published in 1966, Yancey's Waris the story of ordinary men in an extraordinary off-the-main-track war. Marvin Yancey—short, fat, over forty, sloppy, sycophantic, cowardly—is the most unlikely recruit at a Virginia training camp during World War II. He is called a bootlicker and a toady to the army system, which he is, and all the men in his platoon find him disgusting. Yancey's upset of well-planned military maneuvers by overseeing a party that becomes an orgy and by spinning a laundry unit askew are some the novel's funniest moments. In the end, this pocket-size Falstaff finds himself in actual combat across the ocean—quivering, frightened, jelly-like—blundering his way to an irritating act of heroism. 

William Hoffman is the author of thirteen novels, translated into five languages between them, and four story collections. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946 and has received numerous awards for his fiction, including the John Dos Passos Prize, Andrew Lytle Prize, Hammett Prize, Goodheart Prize, Hillsdale Prize, Emily Clark Balch Prize, and publication in The O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories.. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates in literature from Hampden-Sydney College, Washington and Lee University, and Sewanee, the University of the South. He lives in Charlotte Court House, Virginia, population 566.

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