The social history leading to the foundation of the modern state of Israel is the focus of Exodus. The story opens by giving the point of view of an American journalist; like this character, the reader becomes an observer of history unfolding. Exodus appeared in 1958, only a short time after the Holocaust. Uris spendsa significant proportion of the novel describing how the Holocaust affects the lives of his major characters. In the work, children, who are concentration camp survivors detained in a British refugee camp on Cyprus, try to obtain permission to sail to what was then British Palestine, and is now Israel, on a boat named the Exodus. References to the Biblical Exodus recur in the novel, and as the children on the Exodus wait for permission to sail, an appeal to the British authorities is formulated in Biblical language: "Let my people go." Exodus...