The Jews who have survived pogroms and genocide will doubtless weather this vulgar affront as well. Still, individual Jews who find themselves stuck in Leon Uris' paper detention camp must surely regard QB VII as a rather gratuitous endurance test.

Based on a libel suit that the author actually faced in England over a sentence in his third novel, Exodus, the book pits a Gentile Polish doctor, Adam Kelno, against a famous American Jewish novelist, Abe Cady. During World War II Dr. Kelno was forced to practice medicine in the infamous Jadwiga concentration camp. He sues Cady for libel because of a sentence that strayed into Cady's blockbuster novel, The Holocaust, which casually charges Kelno with performing "15,000 or more experimental operations without use of anesthesia."… After setting up these pasteboard people, Uris embarks on a lengthy trial scene in which the grisly camp testimony unfolds.

Many of QB...