Point of View

Exodus is a fictionalized history of the movement of persecuted Eastern European Jews gradually and painfully settling in Palestine. They reclaim swamplands and deserts and have the righteousness of their cause recognized internationally but thwarted by the British Foreign Office and Army under the League of Nations Mandate and United Nations General Assembly vote. They proclaim their independence and fight the more-or-less united Arab nations to a stalemate in the War of Liberation of 1948.

Author Leon Uris, described in the "About the Author" note as a screenwriter and newspaper correspondent turned novelist, is hardly a neutral narrator. The story is told in the third person past tense with great intensity, often indicated by strings of sentences punctuated by exclamation points. Uris reveals himself a thoroughgoing anti-British, anti-imperialist Zionist, but he does not short shrift more moderate Jewish positions or the Arab masses, whom he shows have...