Terrorist: A Novel

ISBN: 0345493915

Author: Updike, John

Condition: New

From one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century-and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series: A chilling tale that is perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from September 11 (People) about an eighteen-year-old devoted to Allah, whos convinced hes discovered Gods purpose for him.The most satisfactory elements in Terrorist are those that remind us that no amount of special pleading can set us free of history, no matter how oblivious and unresponsive to it we may be.-The New York Times Book ReviewThe terrorist of John Updikes title is eighteen-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, the son of an Irish American mother and an Egyptian father who disappeared when he was three. Devoted to Allah and to the Quran as expounded by the imam of his neighborhood mosque, Ahmad feels his faith threatened by the materialistic, hedonistic society he sees around him in the slumping New Jersey factory town of New Prospect. Neither Jack Levy, his life-weary guidance counselor at Central High, nor Joryleen Grant, his seductive black classmate, succeeds in diverting Ahmad from what the Quran calls the Straight Path. Now driving a truck for a local Lebanese furniture store-a job arranged through his imam-Ahmad thinks he has discovered Gods purpose for him. But to quote the Quran: Of those who plot, God is the best.