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Exodus (Uris novel)Exodus is a historical novel by American novelist Leon Uris about the founding of the State of Israel beginning with a compressed retelling of the voyages of the 1947 immigration ship Exodus and describing the histories of the various main characters and the ties of their personal lives to the birth of the new Jewish state.

Published by Doubleday in 1958, it became an international publishing phenomenon, the biggest bestseller in the United States since Gone with the Wind (1936) and still at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list eight months after its release. It has been both widely praised and criticized as being anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian and as having "ignored the basic injustice" at the root of the Israeli�Palestinian conflict.

Otto Preminger directed a 1960 film based on the novel, featuring Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan. It focuses mainly on the escape from Cyprus and subsequent events in Palestine.

Plot
Summary
In 1946 American foreign correspondent Mark Parker and American nurse Kitty Fremont reunite as old friends. Kitty is an American volunteer at the Karaolos internment camp on Cyprus, where thousands of Jews�Holocaust survivors�are being held by the British, who will not let them go to Palestine. Separately, another pair of friends, Jewish fighters Ari Ben Canaan and David Ben Ami, also reunite.

Ari obtains a cargo ship, which became the SS Exodus, with the intention to smuggle 302 Jewish children out of the camp for an illegal voyage to Mandate Palestine before being discovered by military authorities. When the British learn the refugees are in a ship in the harbor of Famagusta, they blockade the harbor and prevent it from sailing. The refugees stage a hunger strike, during which the camp's doctor dies. Ari has wired the ship with explosives and threatens to blow up the ship and the refugees if the British try to board. When the British attempt to gain time by trying to negotiate, Ari announces that every day 10 children will commit suicide on deck for the world to see. The British relent and allow the Exodus safe passage.

A generation previously, Ari's father Jossi and uncle Yakov came to Palestine following the Pogroms in the Russian Empire. They are disappointed because the Jews don't farm and take money from overseas philanthropists. The brothers change their names to Akiva (Yakov) and Barak (Jossi). Jossi tries to understand the Palestinians, using demonstrations of force to gain their respect. The Balfour Declaration is issued during World War I. The two brothers become senior in the Jewish government, and debate using terrorism to fight the British authorities.

The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine is approved, and the conflict with the Palestinians begins in earnest. The Haganah forces prevail over the three Arab generals who vie for fame. They adopt the tactic of siege warfare. Jewish victory at Safed, incorrectly rumored to be through use of an atom bomb, frightens the Palestinian fighters, who flee to Lebanon. Israel proclaims her independence and gradually defeats the Arab nations.

Themes
The main plot of the novel, writes Bonnie Helms, involves a "story of great courage." Among the characters are "freedom fighters" Ari and Barak Ben Canaan and Dov Landau, whose stories are told in flashbacks. American nurse Kitty Fremont and German refugee Karen Hansen work alongside them to help defeat the British blockade of Palestine. The novel includes several love stories, although they often take place in surroundings of violence and terrorism. "Uris gives the reader a strong sense of the past, present, and the future of the Jewish people," states Helms.

The personal stories in Exodus inspired its characters to seek their meaning and identity in relation to their social settings. Those settings were composed of their previous personal experiences, which were then grounded in both religion and geography. According to William Darby, "The leading characters in Exodus only find romantic happiness when they understand that they must conjoin nationalistic, religious and personal aims."

Years after the success of the book, Uris explains why he thinks it received such an enthusiastic reception:

Exodus is the story of the greatest miracle of our times, an event unparalleled in the history of mankind: the rebirth of a nation which had been dispersed 2,000 years before. It tells the story of the Jews coming back after centuries of abuse, indignities, torture, and murder to carve an oasis in the sand with guts and with blood....Exodus is about fighting people, people who do not apologize either for being born Jews or the right to live in human dignity.

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