URIS
(yoo-RISS)
American
novelist
Common
clues: “Trinity” author; “Topaz” author;
“Mila 18” author; "QB VII" author; "Exodus"
author Leon; "Battle Cry" author
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
3 times a year
Video:
Exodus
– trailer (1960)
My
first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best
seller, Battle Cry? In 1953. ~ Leon Uris
Leon
Uris (August 3, 1924 - June 21, 2003) was an American Jewish
novelist, known for the amount of research he did for his novels.
Leon
Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Wolf William and
Anna (Blumberg) Uris. His father, a Polish immigrant, was a
paperhanger and then later a storekeeper. William spent a year in
Palestine after World War I before entering the United States. He
derived his surname from Yerushalmi, meaning man of Jerusalem.
"He was basically a failure", Uris said later of his
father. "He went from failure to failure."
Uris
attended schools in Norfolk, Virginia, and Baltimore but never
graduated from high school having flunked English three times. At
the age of seventeen Uris joined the United States Marine Corps.
He served in the South Pacific at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and New
Zealand from 1942 to 1945. While recuperating from malaria in San
Francisco, he met Betty Beck, a Marine sergeant. They married in
1945.
In
1950, Esquire
magazine bought an article from him and this encouraged him to
work on a novel. The result was the best seller Battle
Cry,
graphically showing the toughness and courage of U.S. Marines in
the Pacific and The
Angry Hills,
a novel set in war-time Greece. As a screen writer and a
newspaper correspondent, he became intensely interested in Israel
which led to his best-known work, Exodus,
which is about the founding of the state of Israel.
Later
works include Mila
18,
a stirring account of Jewish courage in the Warsaw ghetto,
Armageddon:
A Novel of Berlin,
which reveals the detailed work by British and American
intelligence services in planning for the occupation and
pacification of post WWII Germany and in particular of Berlin,
Trinity,
an epic novel about Ireland's struggle for independence, QB
VII,
a chilling novel about the role of a Polish doctor in a German
concentration camp, and The
Haj,
with insights into the history of the Middle East and the secret
machinations of foreigners which have led to today’s
turmoil.
He
also wrote the screenplays for Battle
Cry
and Gunfight
at the O.K. Corral.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Leon Uris".
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