An extraordinary novel from John Updike - the story of 18-year-old Ahmad, whose devotion to Allah and the sacred words of the Qur'an, as revealed to him by the local imam, leads him to commit himself to an act of terror.
Born of an Irish-American mother still searching through sensuous pleasures for her own fulfillment and an Egyptian father long since disappeared, Ahmad craves spiritual nurture and regards so contemptuously the self-indulgent society he sees around him in the faded town of New Prospect, New Jersey, overlooking Manhattan, that the call to self-sacrifice seems a blessing. Neither the world-weary, though well-intentioned, guidance counselor at the high school nor the mischievously seductive classmate Joryleene succeeds in deflecting Ahmad from his determination. And inevitably he is drawn into an insidious plot.
In his extraordinary and highly charged new novel, John Updike tackles one of America's most burning issues - the threat of Islamist terror from within. Set in contemporary New Jersey, Terrorist traces the journey of one young man, from radicalism to fundamentalism to terrorism, against the backdrop of a fraying urban landscape and an increasingly fragmented community. In beautiful prose, Updike dramatizes the logic of the fundamentalist terrorist - but also suggests ways in which we can counter it, in our words and our actions . . .
