Member Reviews
A story concerning the founding of Israel after WW2. Robbins is a masterful story teller that reachers his novels to the letter T. I’ve read all of Robbins novels and immensely enjoy his writing. You will too.
Move over Uris and Michener, another epic novel is here. With well -developed characters the history of Israel’s birth comes alive. A must-read.
Robbins is a safe bet if you like action tales (usually military and thrillers). He writes well and creates good tension and suspense that keeps me engaged. This is historical fiction, and since it incorporates some history, it makes it more interesting. Recommended.
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
Robbins, known for his historical novels centering around the second World War, offers us in his latest novel a book focusing on the short years between the Holocaust and the birth of the state of Israel. During those years, the Jews fought for their independence from the British Empire, which under the auspices of the League of Nations and then the United Nations, ruled with an iron fist over the Mandate of Palestine, which to the British were the spoils of the first World War, conquered from the Ottomans. The British, although they had promised the land be returned to its indigenous people, the Jews, split seventy-seven percent of it off and gave it to an Arab sheik and then throughout the 1930’s limited Jewish immigration from Europe so that those fleeing the death march of the Nazis had nowhere to turn to. After Europe was liberated from Nazi occupation, the British set up a blockade to prevent Jews from returning to their homeland, imprisoning Holocaust survivors in camps in Cyprus for years on end.
The novel has three shifting points of view. There is Eva, who later became Rivkeh, who was sent forward to Palestine with her family remaining behind, hoping to survive the onslaught in Vienna. There is Hugo, the plumber, who somehow, some way, survived Hitler’s death camps and was there when the Americans opened up the camps, barely able to walk. The third point of view is taken up by Vincent Haas, a Brooklyn-raised reporter for the Herald Tribune, who had no stake in any of this, but was there when the camps were liberated and was at Buchenwald to help Hugo walk out of it. As the Allies sought to find out where to send displaced persons after the war, survivors were asked where they were from and Vincent noted that, unlike other Eastern Europeans, the Jews had no country to return to. Often, they had not been even considered citizens of Poland or Russia and could not return there.
Instead on a hope and a prayer, they boarded rickety boats for Palestine, hoping to run the British blockade. Vincent followed Hugo and others on such a boat, hoping to report on the events just as they transpired.
Like Leon Uris’ Exodus, this novel follows the pioneers through the early years of turning desert into farmland amidst a hostile environment. Eva, now Rivkeh, finds her home on a kibbutz in the Gutz Etzion bloc protecting the southern approach to Jerusalem. Hugo becomes a member of the Irgun, a group fighting against the British occupation, whose methods were sometimes ruthless and included the bombing of the King David Hotel and not always popular. Vincent remains a reporter and a trusted friend of Hugo. Later, he meets Rivkeh at the kibbutz. It is through these three points of view that we hear about the battle for liberation from the British.
It is a fairly nuanced novel and Robbins does not always coat his heroes with glory but shows in some fashion all sides of the conflict and those caught up in it. Filled with action, it is a terrific read from start to finish.