Pat Frank

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Pat Frank (May 5, 1907 – October 12, 1964) is the pen name of the American novelist Harry Hart Frank. Frank's most well-known work is the 1959 post-apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon, which has become a staple in American high school classrooms. However, Alas, Babylon was not Frank's first work; this title belongs to his 1946 novel Mr. Adam, which presents a world where all men are rendered sterile.

Frank's career as a writer started long before he wrote Mr. Adam. At an early point in his life, he worked for newspaper agencies as well as government agencies, performing journalist and information brokering jobs.

Other novels include Hold Back the Night, An Affair of State, and Forbidden Area. The first of these was influenced by the author's experiences reporting on the Korean conflict, which are also described in his autobiographical travelogue The Long Way Round.

Frank was awarded with the American Heritage Award in 1961.

Pat Frank lived in Tangerine, Florida, on Lake Beauclaire near Mount Dora and while there wrote Alas, Babylon. One author familiar with local history, Vivian Owens, states that "Pistolville", the name given by Frank to an area nearby Fort Repose in his novel (Alas, Babylon), was in fact a location situated just between the southern edge of Mount Dora to its north and Tangerine to its south (Owens; Alas, Babylon: Mount Dora, Florida). According to Owens, greater Mount Dora was intended by Frank to be the model for his semi-fictional Fort Repose (Owens).

[edit] Works Cited

"Alas, Babylon: Mount Dora, Florida." Everything2.com. 18 Oct. 2006. 18 Oct. 2006 <http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1226500>.

Owens, Vivian W. The Mount Dorans: African American History Notes of a Florida Town. Waynesboro: Eschar, 2000.