Robert Anthony Stone (August 21, 1937 – January 10, 2015) was an American novelist, journalist, and college professor.
He was five times a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, which he did receive in 1975 for his novel Dog Soldiers. Time magazine included this novel in its list 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Stone was also twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
During his lifetime Stone received material support and recognition including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Stone also offered his own support and recognition of writers during his lifetime, serving as Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors for over thirty years.
Stone's best-known work is characterized by action-tinged adventures, political concerns and dark humor. Many of his novels are set in unusual, exotic landscapes of raging social turbulence, such as the Vietnam War; a post-coup violent banana republic in Central America; Jim Crow-era New Orleans, and Jerusalem on the verge of the millennium.
Life
Stone was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 21, 1937, to Homer Stone, who worked for the New Haven Railroad, and Gladys Grant, a teacher. Stone's parents separated when he was an infant. Stone came from a "family of Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Catholics who made their living as tugboat workers in New York harbor".
Stone was expelled from a Marist high school during his senior year Soon afterwards, Stone joined the Navy for four years. At sea he traveled to many locales, including Antarctica and Egypt. But according to Stone, it was his first shore leave in a pre-Fidel Castro era Havana, Cuba that impacted his future writing: