Exodus

Rating:
Summary: Overrated, outdated, and racially motivated
Review: I can't believe they assign this book in high school. I don't know what it is supposed to teach except as an example of propaganda. I am a 32-year-old German American man who occasionally tries to read a weightier book than the usual pulp mysteries. Exodus seemed like a good choice but after reading it I find very little to say that is good about it.

3 major flaws:

1) The mixing of fact & fiction doesn't work for me here. Unlike James Michener who seems to write historically accurate fiction by putting fictional characters minor to the big picture into real events, Uris seems to apply a Forrest Gump approach. In other words, fictional characters get to change and influence history.

2) The book is chock full of stereotypes.

Virtually every British officer is 1 step above a Nazi, unless they have some blood ties to Judaism like the Sutherland character. Terrible things may have been done in the name of British colonialism but Uris ignores all the roads, bridges, amenities, etc that the British brought to remote parts of the world. The British that aren't sadists are dopes on par with Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes. Virtually every Arab character is a traitor & a coward. Every Jewish character is noble and just, even the terrorists. When somebody's kid gets blown up, it doesn't matter who did it or how just their cause was. As a kid I lived in Iran just prior to the revolution. I have been spat on by Moslem kids for being American and I have been spat on by Jewish kids for being German. Both insults were provoked by ingrained racism not by a dislike of me personally. The point I am trying to make is that books like Exodus continue to perpetuate stereotypes and, therefore, race hatred.

Aside from racist stereotypes, Exodus is incredibly sexist. Kitty (and how common was this nickname in the 1950's?) is the fluffy, frilly American who just doesn't fit in with the hardened Israeli women. Ari is the tough rebel leader who... just... can't... cry. If this book was written in the 90's, it could be titled "Ari is from Mars and Kitty is from Venus". Kitty's relationship with Karen is downright disturbing as Kitty perpetually schemes to pull Karen away from her Ersatz Israel and go to America.

3) The book is stylistically all over the place. Flashbacks appear out of nowhere interrupting the action and ramble on for 40+ pages. Sometimes Uris uses broad strokes to cover several events (usually the real ones) in a few pages. Other times he gives you the minutest details of Ari's fictional grandstanding. The dialogue is awkward and mawkish at best. Maybe it's because this book is so old and just hasn't aged well.

On the plus side, I do think Uris details the horrors of the Holocaust very well. I don't like the way they were introduced but Karen's and Dov's stories were fairly gripping. I also could identify with Kitty's continued perplexity of the Jewish and Arab zealousness.

In conclusion, I think the story of the birth of Israel is a fascinating one and needs to be told. But it needs to be fair and unbiased. Exodus isn't that book.

Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BOOK
Review: Exodus by Leon Uris is a gripping novel. This epic story is the epitome of human natures ability to suffer, to persevere, and to succeed. This novel comes highly recommended by me.

The Exodus follows the story of people. Not just any people, a special type of person, a Jew. The Jewish population has undergone numerous tyrants that have tried, unsuccessfully, to banish the Jewish population from the face of the earth. The Exodus follows these people as they return to their rightful homeland of Jerusalem. During the course of this novel, they face numerous obstacles on there road to the rebirth of a Jewish homeland. Even after the forming of the Jewish state of Israel, Jews are persecuted for pursuing peace. The story of the Israel is astonishing. I was quickly surprised by the benevolent and unselfish ways of Jews through their lives. They give all to their Israel, including their life.

The Exodus focuses on a few important characters. Yakov Rabinsky a.k.a. Akiva, Jewish extremist fighter. Jossi Rabinsky a.k.a. Barak Ben Canaan, brother of Yakov, Jewish conservative, father of Jewish politics. Karen Hansen Clemet, Jewish refugee in search of her father. Dov Landau, Jewish survivor of the German concentration camps. Kitty Fremont, American nurse out to look for a daughter figure. Jordana Canaan, Jewish sabra fighter. And finally, Ari Ben Canaan, famed fighter for the Jewish people. The Exodus has been the one of the few assigned reading books that I have enjoyed reading. The story of these people and their home is an example of human nature at its best. This novel connects with me. The story, the character, the settings, and the plots all are not fanaticized. Whether or not it these actual people existed is irrelevant. It is all so believable. The novel is filled with tragedy, but the common goal was something worth fighting for. Once everyone united and fought for it, it was achieved. And that I believe was the best thing about the novel, to see that everyone's unselfishness, benevolence and hard work came to show in the birth of Israel. The Exodus does have one downfall. The beginning of the novel is slow and somewhat confusing. The beginning of the novel lacks a common antagonist and therefore leaves you confused. Once you do get past the first fifty eight pages, the novel takes off and you can get quite interested.

Despite this minor setback, the Exodus was gripping and inspiring. Some parts of the novel made you angry, made you want to cry, made you want to fight, and most important, made you contented at their success. The Exodus was an excellent novel and should be read by anyone with the opportunity.

Rating:
Summary: An Insult to the Reasoning/Feeling/Thinking Man or Woman
Review: The only reason that I read this book was because someone very close to me asked me to. It was terrible. I was outraged at the reviews and acclaim it has recieved, so much so that I decided to write my first review. Let me substantiate my claim:

1. It is historically inaccurate. It is not historical fiction, it is fiction. Check up on the information, rather than absorbing it unthinkingly!

2. The shallowness of the characters made me cringe. As I read the other reviews on this site, I could not believe that the shallow characters and relationships in the book actually satisfied people's literary tastes and excited their emotions. The 100+ positive reviews of this book mortified me.

3. The level of manipulation on the emotional and historical level that the author attempts is flat out insulting to the reader. Again, I was outraged.

4. (NB: I am neither a Jew nor an Arab) It sickens me to see the gross racial prejudice of the author. This is a hand guide to obvious intellectual/emotional underpinnings of 'reverse-Nazism', in Exodus, all non-Jews are gutless traitors lacking in all attributes desirable to a human being, while the heroic, courageous, morally upright, (superior race!) Jews lead an epic battle for the land that is rightfully theirs: just like the Germans did in 1939 against the 'evil' and 'inferior' Polish who were occupying 'their' land.

5. This is a direct quote from the book: "Jew hating is an incurable disease". Well, I guess I am very sick along with millions of others, somehow repressing my pathological need to hate Jews, and its only a matter of time until my 'incurable' subconscious hatred manifests itself. Or maybe we are dealing in pathetic and gross generalizations and being emotionally manipulative, with an obvious disregard for reality.

You don't have to like my review or agree with me, but I challenge you to really read the book, not just swallow it. It won't taste nice, and its a bore.

Rating:
Summary: Poignant story of the birth of a nation
Review: Not a long time ago I heard someone say that we all carry a bit of the Jews inside of us. Maybe it is because of the history the Bible gives us, maybe because we've all experienced rejection and affection in some extreme way or another at some point in our lives. Exodus is the story of the birth of Israel. It is the story of the most ancient of creeds on this earth. It is a story of persecussion, hatred, fear, victory and murder. It is, in fact, the story of the Jewish people, told both from the viewpoint of fact and fiction. The characters in the novel are fictitious, the events are not. It is the story of an Israeli leader by the name of Ari Ben Cannan, and an American nurse - Kitty Fremont - who refuses to be drawn to the "Promised Land" but in the end cannot escape from it because... well, to tell more would be to almost give away part of the novel.

To read this book is not only interesting - it is even vital, I should say. It helps us understand a bit more about the philosophies and the rivalries that have plagued the Middle East since the begginings of time. For us westeners (especially the non-jews like me), this way of thinking, of fighting, is unheard of. Holy Wars? Live and die for the future generations without regard for one's own life? Western capitalism will be shocked at the idea. We all know the story of the Jewish people is one of sorrow, but I doubt we even dare to imagine just how deep this sorrow is. Uris' work leads us through as invisible onlookers to a world where there is no tomorrow but only today. His mix of fact and fiction is what really makes this novel gripping. Sometimes it could get a bit confusing when he resorts to just re-telling of historical events; since Uris is above all else a journalist and this reflects in his writing. For people like myself, who were still not around in the fifties, at times like these the story gets too deep, with names and events popping-up everywhere. But as soon as the focus gets changed to the characters again, you will want to get to the end of the book as soon as your eyes allow. "Exodus" is a novel to remember and re-read a few years down the road; and never forget it.

Rating:
Summary: Epic Account of the Birth of Israel
Review: This remarkable book documents the struggle to be born by the Jewish state of Israel by amongst others , holocaust survivors It IS by in large historically accurate (as historical novels go) And you get to know the characters intimately-the dashing soldier/hero Ari Ben Canaan,Kitty Fremont- the American nurse who reluctantly-despite her misgivings- works with the Jews and grows to change her condescending and slightly prejudiced attitude to a genuine love for these people There is the vivacious and beautiful Karen Clement -a young German Jewish girl who was raised by a Christian family in Denmark-in order to escape Hitlers holocaust and Dov Landau who has lived through the worst horrors imaginable during the dreadful Nazi occupation of Poland We live throught he trials and tribulation of these trying to set up a small homeland against overwhelming odds,violent Arab hordes and the bigotry of the British Empire This is a truthful account and also looks through the eyes of Arabs British and others It is a FACT that the Arabs did attack and destroy Jewish settlements from 1921 and that their leaders wanted to anhilate the Jews from the face of Palestine from the beginning,with any Arabs willing to reach an accomodation with the Jews slaughtered

Rating:
Summary: School assignment for an 11 year old
Review: Our 11 year old daughter was given a choice of books to read for spring break by her school. (Not public)
Exodus was one of the choices. We looked at all choices and did research on Amazon.com. Exodus sounded like the best choice based upon the jacket quotes and statements on amazon.com. Our Daughter has been very dark and brooding recently and we finally ferreted out that it was because of reading about the torture graphically described in the book. Not cool for OUR 11 year old. You make the call at your house. FYI

Rating:
Summary: To many pages
Review: This book has to many pages to tell us that story, the first part of the book, when Ari Ben Canaan rescue some young jewish boys and send them to Palestine is very interesting and it will have you reading all the time, but when the writer writes why Ari does what he does, and the biography of his life starts since his grandparents (that he never saw) is boring and boring, this part of the book is written in more than 100 pages, the second half of the book is worst, describes the story of the independence of Israel and the problems with the english army and all the arabs, this part of the book has more than 350 pages, this story is written in the book Jews, God and History by Max I. Dimont in less than 100 pages, so if you already read that book, you don't have to read this one.
The "love" story of Ari and Kitty is not even a story.

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book!
Review: I could not put this book down while I was reading it. Although it is a fictional story, it teaches a lot about the history of the Jewish people leading up to the foundation of Israel. It reads like a story, not a history book, though, and I found it very interesting and easy to read. I especially liked how Uris intertwines the current happenings with the personal histories of all of the characters. I think this book is a must-read because it sets the beginnings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even explains why a lot of things are the way they are today.

Rating:
Summary: Independence day
Review: 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".

Rating:
Summary: Avid Historical Fiction Reader
Review: Exodus is the extraordinary tale of the birth of Israel.
When I first read the book my knowledge about Israel, it's history and people was limited. When finished I bought every book about this subject I could find and still look for more.
Some people claim this book is full of stereotypes, but after a recent visit to the middle east I can say israelis are as strong, determined and in love with their country as Ari Ben Canaan or Karen Hansen Clement.
The story is enchanting. You would not be able to put it down and at the end will feel sorry it 's over. Few authors are able to present history in such an atractive way as Uris.
No doubts this is GREAT HISTORICAL FICTION.