The Mouse That Roared is a 1955 satirical novel by Irish-American writer Leonard Wibberley, which launched a series of satirical books about an imaginary country in Europe called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Wibberley used the premise to make commentaries about modern politics and world situations, including the nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons in general, and the politics of the United States. The novel originally appeared as a six-part serial in The Saturday Evening Post from 25 December 1954 through 29 January 1955, under the title The Day New York Was Invaded. It was published as a book in February 1955 by Little, Brown. The British edition used the author's original intended title, The Wrath of Grapes, a play on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Wibberley wrote one prequel (1958's Beware of the Mouse) and three sequels: The Mouse on the Moon (1962), The Mouse on Wall Street (1969), and The Mouse That Saved the West (1981). Each placed the tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick in a series of absurd situations in which it faced superpowers and won. Plot The tiny (three miles by five miles) European Duchy of Grand Fenwick, supposedly located in the Alps between Switzerland and France, proudly retains a pre-industrial economy, dependent almost entirely on making Pinot Grand Fenwick wine. However, a California winery makes a knockoff version, "Pinot Grand Enwick", putting the country on the verge of bankruptcy. The prime minister decides that their only course of action is to declare war on the United States. Expecting a quick and total defeat (since their standing army is tiny and equipped with bows and arrows), the country confidently expects to rebuild itself through the largesse that the United States bestows on all its vanquished enemies (as it did for Germany through the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II). With the counterfeit wine as a casus belli, they send a formal written declaration of war, but this is misplaced by the United States Department of State. Receiving no response, the Duchy is forced to muster some troops and hire a ship to stage an actual invasion. Landing in New York City, almost completely deserted above ground because of a citywide disaster drill, the Duchy's invading "army" (composed of the Field Marshal Tully Bascomb, three men-at-arms, and 20 longbowmen) wanders to a top secret government lab and unintentionally captures the "Quadium Bomb" (a prototype