Exodus (Uris novel)

Exodus

Author	Leon Uris
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Historical fiction
Publisher	Doubleday & Company
Publication date	1958
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	626 pages

Exodus by American novelist Leon Uris is about the founding of the State of Israel. Published in 1958, it is based on the name of the 1947 immigration ship Exodus.

In 1956, Uris covered the Arab-Israeli fighting as a war correspondent. Two years later, Exodus was published by Doubleday. Exodus became an international publishing phenomenon, the biggest bestseller in the United States since Gone with the Wind. Uris had sold the film rights in advance.

The story unfolds with the protagonist, Ari Ben Canaan, hatching a plot to transport Jewish refugees from a British detention camp in Cyprus to Palestine. The operation is carried out under the auspices of the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet. The book then goes on to trace the histories of the various main characters and the ties of their personal lives to the birth of the new Jewish state.

A film based on the novel was directed by Otto Preminger in 1960 featuring Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan. It focused mainly on the escape from Cyprus and subsequent events in Palestine.

Main characters

The main strength of the book is its vivid description of different people and the conflicts in their lives. As in several of Uris's novels, some of the fictional characters are partially based upon one or more historical personages, or act as metaphors for the various peoples who helped to build modern Israel.

Ari Ben Canaan

Ari Ben Canaan, was born and raised on a kibbutz, but goes on to become one of the mainstays of the Israeli freedom movement. His father is Barak Ben Canaan (formerly Jossi Rabinsky, born in the Russian Pale of Settlement), head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. His uncle is Akiva (formerly Yakov Rabinsky), leader of the Maccabees, a militant organization (based on the Irgun). The brothers came to Palestine after their father was murdered in a pogrom. As a young man, Ari was engaged to a young woman, Dafna, who was tortured and murdered by Arabs. Dafna later becomes the namesake of the youth village, Gan Dafna, around which a large part of the story unfolds. As part of the Mossad Aliyah Bet (an organization which organized Jewish immigration to Palestine), Ari is extremely creative in devising techniques to bring Jews from all over the world to Palestine - more than allowed by the British quota. During World War II, he served as an officer in the Jewish Brigade of the British army and he uses this experience to benefit his activities. This is his main occupation until Israel gains freedom, when he joins the Israeli army and is assigned to the Negev desert. He sees himself as part of a new breed of Jew who will not 'turn the other cheek'. He is probably based on Moshe Dayan, the Israeli military leader and politician. Many parallels can be drawn between Ari and Dayan; both the fictional Ari and the real-life Dayan were trained by the same British General and had similar World War 2 experience. Ben Canaan is also reported, however, to be based upon Yehudah Arazi.

He is described as six feet and three inches tall, with black hair and blue eyes, and very handsome.

Katherine "Kitty" Fremont

An American nurse newly widowed, she meets Ari Ben Canaan in Cyprus. Grieving for her lost husband and the recent death of her daughter due to polio, Kitty develops a maternal attachment toward Karen Hansen Clement, a German refugee in a Cyprus displaced persons camp. This attachment and her attraction toward Ben Canaan result in her becoming, initially with reluctance, involved in the freedom struggle. She eventually becomes irritated at Ari's lack of emotion towards violent deaths, but comes to understand and accept his dedication to Israel.

She is described in the novel as being tall, blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful.

Bruce Sutherland

A British military officer (rank of brigadier) whose mother was Jewish. After a lifetime of soldiering, he is posted to Cyprus, with instructions to maintain security at the detention camps. Like many British aristocrats he has a stifling, formal manner of speech. Internally, he is torn between his sympathies with the Jews he is required to guard and his duties as a British officer; the horrors he witnessed when his battalion liberated Bergen-Belsen is also a factor. He retires from the army at his own request after a mass escape engineered and led by Ari Ben Canaan. Despite this, he moves to Palestine to settle, becomes good friends with Ben Canaan and acts as a very unofficial military advisor. This facet may be based on the activities of Mickey Marcus, although Marcus himself (under his real-life alias of "Colonel Stone") makes a brief appearance in the book.

Karen Hansen Clement

A German teenager who was brought up for a while by foster parents in Denmark. She was sent there by her family when Hitler rose to power in Germany. Her family were subsequently interned in concentration camps, where most of them met their end. Karen does meet her father again in Israel, but he is a broken man who is unable to communicate or recognize his daughter. The experience leaves her unnerved and shattered. Despite this, she maintains her gentle and dainty personality. Before she is transported to Israel, Karen is placed in a Cypriot refugee camp, and at the end she was murdered by fedayeen from Gaza.

She is described with long brown hair, green eyes, and tall.

Dov Landau

An angry teenager who lost his entire family to the Holocaust, Dov has not merely survived the horrors of ghetto life in Warsaw and of concentration camp in Auschwitz, but has learned from them to turn circumstances to his advantage. A master forger, he narrowly escapes the gas chamber by displaying to the camp doctor his talent. The doctor is not able to tell the difference between his own signature and the five copies that Dov makes. He does work as a forger, but is then assigned to work as a Sonderkommando, which he barely survives. After the camp is liberated, he ends up in Cyprus and eventually Israel as part of the escape organized by Ari Ben Canaan. He joins the Maccabees (based on the Irgun), a Jewish terrorist organization that is headed by Barak's brother. He is being driven by a thirst for revenge "that only God or a bullet can stop". Karen is the only person for whom he is able to feel any emotion. He later becomes a Major in the army of Israel, and unofficially engaged to Karen, but after she was murdered by the fedayeen, he forces himself to go on working for Israel, to make her proud of him.

He is described with blond hair, blue eyes,tall, and looks young for his age.

Jordana Ben Canaan (peripheral character)

Ari's fiery younger sister and a leader of the Palmach (Haganah elite unit), she is engaged to David Ben Ami. Jordana is typical of the young native-born girls, and initially hostile toward Kitty, believing that American women are no good for anything other than dressing up prettily. She changes her opinion when Kitty saves Ari's life and later becomes more identified with Israel's struggle.

She is described as tall, having red hair,and blue eyes.

Barak Ben Canaan

Born Jossi Rabinsky; father of Ari Ben-Canaan. He was born in the Russian Pale of Settlement. After their father was murdered in a pogrom, he and his brother Yakov walked overland to Palestine, where they settled. There he met and married his wife Sarah, and his son Ari and daughter Jordana were born. He became a kibbutz pioneer and eventually head of the Jewish Agency . After his brother Yakov/Akiva joins the Irgun, he cuts off all contact with Akiva. Near the end of the novel, Barak dies of cancer and was buried next to Akiva.

Barak is 6 feet and 3 inches tall, has red hair and beard and blue eyes.

Akiva

Born Yakov Rabinsky. Brother of Barak Ben Canaan. Poet and leader of the radical underground group the 'Maccabees'. While the latter bears some resemblance to the real-life Irgun (Etze"l), the character may be inspired by Avraham Stern of Lehi. Near the end of the book, he is shot by the British whilst escaping from prison. His brother Barak is later buried next to him.

He is of medium height, with brown eyes and dark hair.

David Ben Ami

A close colleague of Ari Ben Canaan, both in the Haganah and later in the IDF. He is Jordana's lover, and a friend of Kitty Freemont. He was born in Jerusalem , he is university educated and plans to take a doctorate. Steeped in religious and mystical lore, he is also a specialist in Biblical archeology and warfare. In this regard, his knowledge is valuable in the relief of besieged Jerusalem. He is killed in a suicide mission.

He is described with black hair, brown eyes.

The genesis of Exodus

According to one undocumented, and indeed incorrect source, in the early 1950s Uris was hired by an American public relations firm to go to Israel and "soak up the atmosphere and create a novel about it". That novel would be Exodus, which came out in 1958 and was to become his best known work. Most sources tell us that Uris, motivated by an intense interest in Israel, financed his own research for the novel by selling the film rights in advance to MGM and writing articles about the Sinai campaign. It is said that the book involved two years of research, and involved thousands of interviews.

Further reading

• Weissbrod, Rachel, "Exodus as a Zionist Melodrama" in: Israel Studies 4.1 (1999) 129-152