The Haj

By: Leon Uris

Narrated by: Neil Shah

Length: 21 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Leon Uris retums to the land of his acclaimed best-seller Exodus for an epic story of hate and love, vengeance and forgiveness. The Middle East is the powerful setting for this sweeping tale of a land where revenge is sacred and hatred noble. Where an Arab ruler tries to save his people from destruction but cannot save them from themselves. When violence spreads like a plague across the lands of Palestine - this is the time of The Haj.

©1984 Leon Uris (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Historic Account

This is an excellent account of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with superb narration of its characters.

Great Historical Novel

Good story about the history of the conflict in the Middle East, but really strange ending. Wish it could have ended on a more positive note! Very good narration.

Still Timely

Sometimes novels are the truest books in the library. This one follows a Palestinian family from 1922 until the late 1950’s. The author is careful to make all the main characters multidimensional. The reader is sympathetic to all the main characters at some point - particularly the main narrator, Ishmael. Clearly, the author wants the protagonist family to stand for many Arab families as the father’s name is Ibrahim, the mother’s name is Hagar, and the son’s name is Ishmael. The family is witness and/or participant to many historical events that shaped the Middle East. The author shows how the family was adversely affected by policy decisions from the many sides of the conflict with the creation of Israel. Ultimately, it is a sad story. The author’s main thesis is that the Palestinians have been the pawns of the Arab powers who actually hate them. The author also shows his protagonists as victims of an overall culture of hatred and revenge where the cycle of violence and medieval mentality offers no end or hope. I give this five stars as the story and the performing reader’s authentic accents give one a realistic look into a bewildering situation that plagued the world today.

Comes highly recommended…

Comes highly recommended…but just not my kind of novel. It was well written and read.

Outstanding saga

An outstanding recount of an embittered region and a long lasting passionate hatred. The characters are well developed and one can feel their struggle and pain.

The Haj

Very well written. The historical content was beyond reproach. It is telling that writing seem like yesterday instead of 1943. Me. uris is brilliant.

The Levant Is Not Occidental

The Haj, by Leon 0Uris, and read by Neil Shah. This was certainly a different story than anticipated. Its information is historical fiction and provides a window on Palestinian early 20th Century lifestyle and value system, its stumbling into its diaspora after the emergence of Israel, and its self-destructive heredities.

This is a history of the Palestinian peoples since the 1920s. It does not speak well of their social structure. It tells the story of one patriarchal family of a town leader or tribal leader, who is forced to evacuate his family’s hundreds of years of existence in a Palestinian village, by Arabs and Arab nations, who want to war on the Israelis. Once moved, it then becomes the story of how the Arab world abandons the displaced which now exists as the Palestinian lost nation.

I did not find the above described horrid happenings as the worst part of the humanity being dissected in this story. The treatment and place of woman is horrific. Absurd and horrific.

The story is not too involving. It does not read like a Charles Dickens whose stories always involve you dearly with any of several leading characters. You read about the characters, you are not involved with the humanity of the characters in this story. But it is an easy tale to follow and not boring. The reading was well done.

Do, read this work if you have an interest in understanding the Arab Islamic mind. It will then be easy to understand why the West Asian or the Levant and Occidental worlds have been waring since Greece and Persia, the Crusades and 9/11.

Leon is the man.

I liked this Samoset as much as Trinity. a story is clearly good when characters can make me angry at them.

Learned quite a bit, now it's time to verify

very informative; more than a bit biased; kept me listening until the last of the very unsatisfactory ending

A sad but compelling tale

I remember reading Exodus in high school and when I saw more Uris books in audible, i got them. This volume tells the Arab side of the founding of Israel. Like others have noted, the Jews are portrayed as successful and industrious while the Arabs are portrayed as violent, tribal and much, much less industrious. Sadly, ugly behavior such as honor killings still occur today. I enjoyed the book.