Terrorist - Hardcover

Updike, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307264653 ISBN 13: 9780307264657

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006

Synopsis

The ever-surprising John Updike's twenty-second novel is a brilliant contemporary fiction that will surely be counted as one of his most powerful. It tells of eighteen-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy and his devotion to Allah and the words of the Holy Qur'an, as expounded to him by a local mosque's imam.

The son of an Irish-American mother and an Egyptian father who disappeared when he was three, Ahmad turned to Islam at the age of eleven. He feels his faith threatened by the materialistic, hedonistic society he sees around him in the slumping factory town of New Prospect, in northern New Jersey. Neither the world-weary, depressed guidance counselor at Central High School, Jack Levy, nor Ahmad's mischievously seductive black classmate, Joryleen Grant, succeeds in diverting the boy from what his religion calls the Straight Path. When he finds employment in a furniture store owned by a family of recently immigrated Lebanese, the threads of a plot gather around him, with reverberations that rouse the Department of Homeland Security.

But to quote the Qur'an: Of those who plot, God is the best.

About this title

Review:

""Terrorist" leaves the reader ripping through the book to its finale, desperate to find out what happens. . . . [A] compelling and surprising ride."--"USA Today"
"A chilling tale that is perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from September 11."--"People" (Critic's Choice)
"Riveting . . . emotionally daring . . . Updike's ability to get inside the mind of his Ahmad . . . is what renders the novel credible and sometimes wrenching in its authenticity."--"The Boston Globe"

"Terrorist" leaves the reader ripping through the book to its finale, desperate to find out what happens. . . . [A] compelling and surprising ride. "USA Today"
A chilling tale that is perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from September 11. "People" (Critic s Choice)
Riveting . . . emotionally daring . . . Updike s ability to get inside the mind of his Ahmad . . . is what renders the novel credible and sometimes wrenching in its authenticity. "The Boston Globe""

"Terrorist leaves the reader ripping through the book to its finale, desperate to find out what happens. . . . [A] compelling and surprising ride."--USA Today
"A chilling tale that is perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from September 11."--People (Critic's Choice)
"Riveting . . . emotionally daring . . . Updike's ability to get inside the mind of his Ahmad . . . is what renders the novel credible and sometimes wrenching in its authenticity."--The Boston Globe

About the Author:

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0307264653
• ISBN 13: 9780307264657
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320