Leon Uris's novels "Exodus" and "Trinity" moved me, captivated me, and kept me up late at night. I expected his latest, "The Haj," to have the same effect, and I was very disappointed that it didn't.

The story failed to capture my interest until I was almost halfway through it, and I never got fully caught up in it. The writing is surprisingly poor; many of the characters never come to life, and Uris continually hits the reader over the head with his prejudices against the Arab world and Islam….

The opening chapters are confused, because Uris jumps around in time and switches viewpoints continually. Granted, in order for a reader to understand the historical events in which the characters are involved, he or she must know something of the history of Palestine. But Uris provides so much information I sometimes wondered if I was reading a novel or a history book—and then how much of the apparent history was really accurate and how much was fiction.

Uris paints a richly detailed portrait of Arab life and culture. However, this portrait is also completely unsympathetic to the Arab world in general and particularly to the Palestinian Arabs. In fact, "The Haj" reads like a treatise on the evils of Islam and the brutality of Arab culture. It conveys the distinct impression that there is no possibility for a peaceful solution in the Mideast.

The pessimism, combined with Uris's prejudices, saps the novel of its vitality and appeal. True, Uris displayed his views clearly in "Exodus" and in "Trinity." Yet, because of his sympathy for his subjects, these novels displayed more enthusiasm than bias, which contributed greatly to their readability. This is missing in the new novel.

"The Haj" also suffers from too little plot and too much talk—most of it in a stilted, awkward style that reads like a translation. It would seem that Uris attempted to capture the colorful, formal style of Arab rhetoric, but the result is unwieldy and boring.