Leon Uris, hugely popular author of Exodus, dies at 78

AUTHOR Leon Uris, an immigrant’s determined son who made it big with the best-selling Exodus and other hugely popular novels, has died, his ex-wife said yesterday. He was 78.

Mr Uris died on Saturday of natural causes at his home on New York’s Shelter Island, photographer Jill Uris said from her home in Aspen, Colorado

Published in 1958, the 600-page Exodus was a sensation as millions read Mr Uris’ detailed, heroic chronicle of European Jewry from the turn of the century to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

The novel was translated into dozens of languages and was even distributed secretly in communist countries.

‘Exodus’ has been the Bible of the Jewish dissident movement in Russia,” Mr Uris said in a 1988 interview. “It’s referred to as ‘The Book.’”

Energetic and unafraid, the author was as much an adventurer as a writer, travelling tirelessly and sometimes risking his life.

In researching “Exodus,” he logged thousands of miles and ended up reporting on the 1956 conflict in the Middle East.

Mr Uris also endured some of his own battles, feuding with directors Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock, and fighting lawsuits for both “Exodus” and the thriller “Topaz.”

“I used to think of myself as a very sad little Jewish boy, isolated in a Southern town, undersized, asthmatic,” Mr Uris said.

“When I read all my correspondence again, I realised I was a hustler,” he said. “I was tough. I used everything to my advantage. I could be very ruthless. I hurt a lot of people on the way up.”

Mr Uris’ other novels included “Trinity,” an epic best seller about Ireland; “QBVII,” a courtroom drama based on his legal troubles with “Exodus“; and “Mila 18,” about the Jewish uprising in Warsaw during World War II.

“Mila 18” was also an unintentional influence on both American publishing and American slang: Its title convinced a rival publisher to change the name of an upcoming novel, by a then-unknown Joseph Heller, from “Catch-18” to “Catch-22.”

His latest work, titled “O’Hara’s Choice,” was set for release in October, Jill Uris said, but illness had prevented him from making plans for a promotional tour.

“He had been quite ill this year and was not travelling,” she said, adding that, though divorced in 1989, the couple had remained friends.

Mr Uris’ most personal novel, “Mitla Pass,” came out in 1988 and closely follows the lives of the author and his family.

The author married three times and had two children.

Mr Uris was born in Baltimore and spent several years growing up in Norfolk, Virginia, His father, Wolf William, was a paper hanger and storekeeper.