Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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121 of 128 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Independence day, September 23, 2003
While at work this morning, I was shown an original birth certificate issued in Israel in 1950. I actually felt something of a thrill of pride (even though I've never been there, and I've long since forgotten Hebrew letters). That's mostly due to my having finished "Exodus" last night."Exodus" isn't the kind of book you read for literary merit. The third word in the book is "plip-plopped", which isn't a word at all. If you're deconstructing page 1, you'll get annoyed the random shifts in the narrative voice. The book begins with a couple of plodding middle-American characters with silly names like "Kitty", and "Mark Parker". However, Uris knows what he's doing. He's constructing an argument in favor of the state of Israel, laid out against 70 years' worth rampant European anti-Semitism. It's no coincidence that the first segment recounts the Holocaust (first, in the eyes of a girl who escaped to relative peace in Jew-friendly Denmark, and then in the eyes of an Auschwitz survivor), and then the second shows the seeds of modern Israel through a pair of mythic-quality Russian shtetl refugees who enter Palestine in the 1880s and begin transforming the soil. The balance of the book shows Palestine's struggles under the suffocating British mandate, and nascent Israel's miraculous victory over the various Arab states seeking to "push Israel into the sea". Played out over the epic history is a storyline involving the Ben Canaan family, Kitty the American nurse, her surrogate Israeli daughter Karen, and Karen's sullen, rebellious, Sal Mineo-type boyfriend Dov. The body count rises and the deaths become more personal, more tragic, as the story builds its way slowly to several shattering conclusions. A lot has changed since 1948. Israel was then associated with the political left; not anymore. The plight of the Palestine Arabs who were induced out of their land by the warfaring Arab states, however, has not been resolved. Those refugees are still right there, crammed along the Israeli borders in the same makeshift cities. Pages 551-554 of the book present a summary of this unconscionable situation, and just about every word is still true, 50 years later. The joyously pro-Israel strains of "Exodus" will probably now draw more cynicism than solidarity, in this brave new world of the New York Times headlines and Saudi peace proposals. However, I wouldn't change a word. Except "plip-plopped".
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41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Into The Promised Land, April 5, 2005
Leon Uris (1924-2003) was a well-respected novelist and the author of several screenplays--but it was not until the 1958 publication of EXODUS that he became one of America's most popular writers. Sales in the United States were phenomenal, and by the early 1960s EXODUS had been translated into some fifty languages. It would become one of the most widely published and widely read novels of the 20th Century.
The novel was extremely topical, for it dealt with the creation of modern-day Israel, a highly controversial event--and one well within the memory of most adult readers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. But Uris did more than this: he also painted a general history of European anti-Semitism with an emphasis on the Holocaust. For many readers, EXODUS would be their first encounter with such material, and Uris took nothing for granted in his descriptions and accounts.
The great strength of the novel is its narrative power. The primary action follows a group of post-war European Jews held by the British for their illegal attempt to enter British-dominated Palestine--and their determination to break British policy--but it also flashes back to the tell the histories of the characters involved. These histories, which reveal both Nazi atrocity and the long history of anti-Semitism, are often even more compelling than the primary story line itself. It is very much a page-turner from start to finish.
Even so, EXODUS doesn't quite manage to make the leap from 1950s pop fiction to the level of masterpiece, and it remains very much of its time. Uris is an extremely literal writer, and he is less interested in creating plot and character than he is in using both to present a sort of "headline" history of anti-Semitism and the birth of Israel. Consequently, both his style and his characters--although we certainly learn a tremendous amount about their experiences--read as rather flat.
The novel is also somewhat controversial, for it is written from an extremely Zionist position, and for Uris this position is fundamental to all else. Half a century later, however, it is very evident that the matter was never as simple as Uris would have us believe. There are more than a few passages that will cause modern readers to think "But it didn't turn out that way, did it?" And some readers may consider the novel as anti-British and anti-Arabian as the anti-Semitism the book so loudly decries.
Even with these issues, EXODUS is a powerful novel--and in a historical sense a very important work, for it would influence American thinking on the subject of Zionism and Israel for decades to come. And when all is said and done, it's still one helluva read. Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
In Memory of Bob Zeidler, Amazon Reviewer
Greatly Missed and Not Forgotten
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Skewed but Readable., August 12, 2005
First of all let me state that this novel is ideologically biased.
That is no surprise; Leon Uris (1924 - 2003) was a Jewish writer with Pole and Russian parents that had suffered harsh circumstances in their lives.
He was in love with Israel and the meaning of having a Country that may be claimed as his/her own by any member of the community anywhere all over the world.
Nevertheless it is a very interesting book to read.
Why?
Well here are some clues:
Starting from post-WWII scenery (1946) placed in Cyprus refugee-detainee camp, Uris trace and describes many historically events:
Show the birth of Zionism, started by the shock produced by Dreyfuss' Trial in a sensible visionary journalist.
Give vivid reconstruction and picture of Jews' life conditions in Russia before WWI and the same for Jews everyday life in Poland before and pending WWII.
Describe different emigrations phases of Jews into Palestine.
Portray the struggle of Jewish colonists against great odds.
Depict the stark reality of displaced Jews in the aftermath of WWII.
The story follows many family threads converging into Palestine-Israel from 1880 till 1950.
All this matters renders the novel a good read for anyone interested in Middle East affairs.
A very sensible issue of great relevance these days is shown in this novel. It is how a community reacts in front of their own extremist members (the Macabee in the book) and the complex decisions they should take. Furthermore taking into account that many of them are close relatives, and then strong contradictory feelings erupt.
Main characters as Ari Ben Caanan, Barak his father, Dov Landau, Dr. Libermann and Akiva amongst other have unmistakable real historically persons as models.
Uris' prose is not so great. His style is more related to a journalistic chronicle. He is better describing facts and situations than giving deepness and complexity to his characters.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
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