Leon Uris
| Leon uris | |
|---|---|
Drawing of Leon Uris by Chaim Topol
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| Born |
August 3, 1924 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | June 21, 2003 (aged 78) Shelter Island, New York, U.S. |
| Resting place | Quantico National Cemetery |
| Occupation | Author |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Notable works |
Exodus (1958) Mila 18 (1961) QB VII (1970) |
| Spouse |
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Leon Marcus Uris (August 3, 1924 – June 21, 2003) was an American author, known for his historical fiction. His two bestselling books were Exodus (published in 1958) and Trinity (published in 1976).
Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Jewish American parents Wolf William and Anna (née Blumberg) Uris. His father, a Polish-born immigrant, was a paperhanger, then a storekeeper. His mother was first-generation Russian American. William spent a year in Palestine after World War I before entering the United States. He derived his last name from Yerushalmi, meaning "man of Jerusalem". (His brother Aron, Leon's uncle, took the name Yerushalmi.) "He was basically a failure", Uris later said of his father. "I think his personality was formed by the harsh realities of being a Jew in Czarist Russia. I think failure formed his character, made him bitter."
At age six, Uris reportedly wrote an operetta inspired by the death of his dog. He attended schools in Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, but never graduated from high school, and failed English three times. When he was 17 and in his senior year of high school, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He served in the South Pacific with the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, where he was stationed in New Zealand, and fought as a radioman in combat on Guadalcanal and Tarawa from 1942 through 1944. He was sent to the US after suffering from dengue fever, malaria and a recurrence of asthma that made him miss his battalion's decimation at Saipan that featured in Battle Cry. While recuperating from malaria in San Francisco, he met Betty Beck, a Marine sergeant; they married in 1945.
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