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adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A heavy read. Fascinating study of the times since I knew so little.
Interesting how the style of writing has changed from mid last century until now.
Interesting how the style of writing has changed from mid last century until now.
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Well-written but scoots over a lot of settler-colonial atrocities. Beautiful portrayal of the Jewish side of things though
I loved this! Now I'm sad I put it off -- I was falling behind a bit during the week I was supposed to read this for my challenge, and since this book was so long I figured if I skipped it I could catch up faster than if I'd skipped one of the skinnier books.
And when I did get to it, I decided to get the audio version from Audible. That was a great decision also - the narration is excellent, and it allowed me to parallelize and have this chunky book going at the same time as I went through a few others in the paper version.
Anyway, the actual book! It is a fictionalized telling from the point of view of a set of Jewish people covering a time period from somewhat before WWII until the formation of Israel and some of the ramifications of that. As far as I can tell, the details are fairly historically accurate - the author was a war correspondent during this time period so much of the story is based on his personal recollections. It even turned out that parts of the book that I had expected to be fictionalized were real events, such as the Exodus itself, a ship converted to be able to carry Jewish passengers from other countries into Palestine.
It's interesting. During middle school, high school, and undergraduate college years I took American History a bazillion times. But it turns out that history teachers are uniformly bad at planning -- every class started back with Columbus, events leading up to the Revolutionary War, etc, and never did make it to World War I. One class I was in made it into the 1920s, but we skipped over the war and instead talked about flappers and the stock market crash. I suppose WWI was more Europe centered, but still. WWII never made it into any of my course work. So this book was one of my first exposures to anything other than the events that happened in Germany and Poland. I feel like this should be required reading in high schools! It'd be much more interesting than the text book.
The main characters in the novel are fictional, although they interact with real historical figures and events. Uris does a great job of bringing them to life and making them feel real though - I was sad when the novel ended and feel as though I will miss them! Ari is definitely one of my favorite fictional characters. There is romance and love, betrayal, and of course sadness and death. The characters all react in different but believable ways to the events around them, and they generlaly change and become stronger throughout the course of the novel.
I highly recommend this book, and the audio version if you are into them. There are a few parts that I spaced out on, mainly where it got more into some of the political aspects, which I know are important but just not as exciting as hearing what the characters were up to throughout that time. But they are few and far between given the length and topic of this book... that combination could have led this to be very dry indeed, but Uris avoids that and creates what I'd call a historical masterpiece.
And when I did get to it, I decided to get the audio version from Audible. That was a great decision also - the narration is excellent, and it allowed me to parallelize and have this chunky book going at the same time as I went through a few others in the paper version.
Anyway, the actual book! It is a fictionalized telling from the point of view of a set of Jewish people covering a time period from somewhat before WWII until the formation of Israel and some of the ramifications of that. As far as I can tell, the details are fairly historically accurate - the author was a war correspondent during this time period so much of the story is based on his personal recollections. It even turned out that parts of the book that I had expected to be fictionalized were real events, such as the Exodus itself, a ship converted to be able to carry Jewish passengers from other countries into Palestine.
It's interesting. During middle school, high school, and undergraduate college years I took American History a bazillion times. But it turns out that history teachers are uniformly bad at planning -- every class started back with Columbus, events leading up to the Revolutionary War, etc, and never did make it to World War I. One class I was in made it into the 1920s, but we skipped over the war and instead talked about flappers and the stock market crash. I suppose WWI was more Europe centered, but still. WWII never made it into any of my course work. So this book was one of my first exposures to anything other than the events that happened in Germany and Poland. I feel like this should be required reading in high schools! It'd be much more interesting than the text book.
The main characters in the novel are fictional, although they interact with real historical figures and events. Uris does a great job of bringing them to life and making them feel real though - I was sad when the novel ended and feel as though I will miss them! Ari is definitely one of my favorite fictional characters. There is romance and love, betrayal, and of course sadness and death. The characters all react in different but believable ways to the events around them, and they generlaly change and become stronger throughout the course of the novel.
I highly recommend this book, and the audio version if you are into them. There are a few parts that I spaced out on, mainly where it got more into some of the political aspects, which I know are important but just not as exciting as hearing what the characters were up to throughout that time. But they are few and far between given the length and topic of this book... that combination could have led this to be very dry indeed, but Uris avoids that and creates what I'd call a historical masterpiece.
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
I learned some stuff, or think I did (since the book is faction, it's a bit hard to tell). The book's caricatures of Arabs were unnecessarily cruel and the presentation was one sided. The plotting was clunky and if Uris wanted to write a history book he just should have done so. I learned the British were worse than I had thought.
Leon Uris takes his telling of the story of 20th Century Jews from the holocaust theme of Mila 18 to the Zionist theme in Exodus. The story opens in the Auschwitz concentration camp with a team of Zionists who are planning to move the survivors to Palestine in anticipation of the founding of the Jewish state there. The survivors move to Cyprus where they are bottled up and harassed by the new enemy of the Jewish people, the British Empire. Hundreds of Jews board a boat intending to sail to Palestine, but the boat is not allowed to leave the Cypriot harbor. For several days the holocaust survivors stage a hunger strike to motivate the British to allow the boat to sail, and eventually they do. The refugees eventually make their way to Palestine in time for the 1948 independence of Israel.
"Exodus" follows the typical theme of Leon Uris - the struggle of the Jewish people against everyone else in the world. Now, granted, in Mila 18 the villains are the Nazis, and the Nazis make very natural and logical villains. But in "Exodus" the villains are the British, and later the Palestinian Arabs. Both the British and the Arabs practice inexplicable hatred against the Jews in this novel, and the new Israeli state did what they did in 1946-1948 only because they were forced to do so by these villains. It is an over simplictic portrayal of these very complicated events, and I can certainly see how many people are offended by it. Now, I am not a big fan of the PLO or the Arab wars against Israel, but I am also not naive enough to believe that the Israelis are simply victims of an international conspiracy. Perhaps a more accurate portrayal of the complications of this situation would have made a more compelling story as well as making this novel a bit less of a fairy tale.
Despite this, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the events surrounding the foundation of Israel, as long as the reader bears in mind these caveats.
"Exodus" follows the typical theme of Leon Uris - the struggle of the Jewish people against everyone else in the world. Now, granted, in Mila 18 the villains are the Nazis, and the Nazis make very natural and logical villains. But in "Exodus" the villains are the British, and later the Palestinian Arabs. Both the British and the Arabs practice inexplicable hatred against the Jews in this novel, and the new Israeli state did what they did in 1946-1948 only because they were forced to do so by these villains. It is an over simplictic portrayal of these very complicated events, and I can certainly see how many people are offended by it. Now, I am not a big fan of the PLO or the Arab wars against Israel, but I am also not naive enough to believe that the Israelis are simply victims of an international conspiracy. Perhaps a more accurate portrayal of the complications of this situation would have made a more compelling story as well as making this novel a bit less of a fairy tale.
Despite this, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the events surrounding the foundation of Israel, as long as the reader bears in mind these caveats.
Captivating story of the struggle of the Jewish people to return to the land of their ancestors and establish a homeland once again. Characters that you become invested in bring the story to life against the historical and political background.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes