Famed New York author Sol Yurick, best remembered for his 1965 novel The Warriors , died Saturday, January 5 of complications from lung cancer, according to the New York Daily News . He was 87.
Born in Manhattan in 1925, Yurick received a degree in English from New York University and later a master’s in English from Brooklyn College.
After graduation, Sol took up a job as a social investigator for the Department of Welfare, giving him a true understanding of the “streets” and its citizens, which shaped his writing.
“His work meant a tremendous amount to those who lived in the city in the 60s and 70s,” said novelist Jonathan Lethem, who grew up in Brooklyn during that time. “He had a talismanic quality. He was of the street, the place, the milieu that couldn’t be understood without a grasp of the everyday.”
Though he penned 8 books during his lifetime, Yurick is most famous for his first novel, The Warriors . The book, which was published in 1965, combined a classical Greek story, Anabasis, with a fictional account of gang wars in New York City at the time.
The cult classic was eventually turned into a movie by Walter Hill in 1979, starring Michael Beck ( Xanadu ) and James Remar ( Dexter , Sex and the City ).
After The Warriors , Mr. Yurick went on to publish several more novels, including Fertig (1966), The Bag (1968), Someone Just Like You (1972), An Island Death (1976), Richard A (1981), Behold Metatron, the Recording Angel (1985), Confession (1999).
Sol Yurick is survived by his daughter, his wife Adrienne Yurick, son-in-law, Mark Vincent and grandson, Niko Yurick Vincent.
