With his mantelpiece already crowded with major literary awards, John Updike could contentedly rest on his laurels and continue to write about what he calls his main subject: "American small town, Protestant middle class." Instead, this Nobel Prize contender insists on grappling with issues on the cutting-edge of history. In Terrorist, Updike takes on the hot-button topic of our time. At the center of this large-scale ensemble novel is Ahmad Mulloy Asmawy, a radically alienated Egyptian-Irish-American teenager who falls under the thrall of a New Jersey storefront jihadist. Moving in strange counterpoint to Ahmad is Jack Levy, a 63-year-old guidance counselor who hopes to steer this fledgling terrorist away from absolutist influences. Updike engages us by placing us inside the psyche of someone who, given the opportunity, would destroy us. A major literary event.
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 a bohemian 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 is God the best.
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 a bohemian 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 is God the best.
Terrorist
Narrated by Christopher Lane
John UpdikeUnabridged — 9 hours, 45 minutes
Terrorist
Narrated by Christopher Lane
John UpdikeUnabridged — 9 hours, 45 minutes
Overview
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 a bohemian 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 is God the best.
Editorial Reviews
The last part of the novel is suspenseful. It brings together a serviceable plot, which leans a little heavily on coincidental connections, a questionable provocation and some broadly motivated acts of heroism. It seems meant as a fable, and any good fable requires some derring-do. 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. And that history, in disposing of empires, admits of no innocents and spares no one.
— The New York Times
Updike's latest offers up a probing post-9/11 history lesson on America-its mythology and street realities, religious attitudes, and the myriad nationalities that have borne this country fruit. Lane has his work cut out, and for the most part delivers. He contends with multiple foreign accents and American dialects, not to mention gospel singing and Arabic recitations of the Koran. The tale follows a righteous Muslim teenager named Ahmad, an (Irish-Arab) American born and bred in northern New Jersey, and his seemingly inevitable journey toward a domestic suicide attack. Ahmad's Irish mother, Jewish guidance counselor and Lebanese employer/handler are all rendered with distinction by Lane. But Ahmad's accent is odd and hard to trace, almost seeming to contain a Dixie influence. Lane voices an African-American schoolmate in similar style, creating the potential for confusion when the two interact. Phone calls, snippets of TV shows, speeches and sermons are treated with a through-a-speaker effect that is sometimes disconcerting. But it doesn't detract from a generally rich audio experience, one built on diverse narration and ethnically sprawling storytelling. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 10). (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Along with Philip Roth, Updike remains our modern-day Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his work, he has examined the motivations of scientists (Roger's Book), the angst of aging high school basketball stars (the Rabbit tetralogy), and the sexual peccadilloes of ministers (A Month of Sundays). Here he captures the internal conflicts of an Islamic boy whose sights are set on martyrdom through a terrorist act. Ahmad, the son of an Irish American mother and an Egyptian father, joins a local mosque in New Prospect, NJ, at the age of 11. Soon he is entranced by the teachings of Islam, and the local imam takes the boy under his wing. By the time Ahmad is a high school senior, all that he sees around him is godless consumerism. After graduation, he gets a job at a local furniture store that is a front for a radical Muslim organization and becomes a principal in the plan to commit a terrorist act. Updike captures brilliantly the coercive tactics of the organization and the young boy's uncertainties about his actions. At the same time, Updike falters in his portrait by depicting Ahmad as a "typical American teenager" cast into an uncomfortable role of an Islamic terrorist. Even so, Updike's always beautiful prose and his ever-probing imagination trace what happens when worlds collide. All libraries will want to order this. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/06.]-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Discursiveness, coincidence and a barely credible surprise ending compromise, but do not critically impair, Updike's intriguing 22nd novel: a scary portrayal of uptight, perpetually imperilled post-9/11 America. It's set in Prospect, N.J., where high-school senior Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy (son of an Egyptian exchange student father and an Irish-American mother)-a self-declared "good Muslim, in a world that mocks faith"-quietly distances himself from the future his education and culture appear to promise. During the summer of 2004, Ahmad rejects the idea of college (despite the promptings of his guidance counselor, "lapsed Jew" Jack Levy), acquires a commercial driver's license and finds employment driving a truck for a Lebanese family (the Chehabs) who own and operate Excellency Home Furnishings. Up until the "mission" for which fast-talking, seemingly Americanized Charlie Chehab has prepared Ahmad is undertaken, Updike does what he does (a) best: paints a densely detailed picture of complacent, overindulgent, morally befuddled urban America-while simultaneously demonstrating persuasive mastery of the scriptures Ahmad worships; and (b) worst: burdens the narrative with urgent sex (Jack's adultery with Ahmad's free-spirited mother Teresa; Ahmad's near-seduction by a black classmate sunk in the slough of godlessness he so despises) and very nearly risible coincidences. Nevertheless, much of the novel works smashingly: Ahmad's impassioned sessions with his slyly seductive Muslim mentor Shaikh Rashid; his tense relationships with schoolmates and muted bonding with his amoral mom; and especially what look to be his final hours, as he drives the furniture truck toward his longed-for destination:paradise. Some readers will call the novel's ending a cop-out; others may acknowledge it as a wry dramatization of the impossibility of predicting where contemporary ethnic and religious conflicts are leading us. However it's read, Updike, approaching his mid-70s, continues to entice, provoke and astonish. Who knows where he'll take us next?First printing of 150,000
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
Life can be cruel when you're a half-Egyptian, half-Irish high school student living in New Jersey. That's Ahmad Ashmawy's predicament; he’s too smart for his small world and unable to contain his anger about the flawed, excessive American culture that surrounds him. Recruited by a local Shaikh, he's eventually offered an opportunity to commit a terrorist act. Ahmad's final decision—whether to detonate or not—becomes an allegory of his life. Christopher Lane, no stranger to stories of religion and terrorism (he read Charlie Wilson's War), deftly uses accents and pacing to carry this book forward with the momentum of a thriller. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172466151 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2006 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Terrorist
By John Updike
Random House
John UpdikeAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0307264653
Chapter One
I
Devils, Ahmad thinks. These devils seek to take away my God. All day long, at Central High School, girls sway and sneer and expose their soft bodies and alluring hair. Their bare bellies, adorned with shining navel studs and low-down purple tattoos, ask, What else is there to see? Boys strut and saunter along and look dead-eyed, indicating with their edgy killer gestures and careless scornful laughs that this world is all there is--a noisy varnished hall lined with metal lockers and having at its end a blank wall desecrated by graffiti and roller-painted over so often it feels to be coming closer by millimeters.
The teachers, weak Christians and nonobservant Jews, make a show of teaching virtue and righteous self-restraint, but their shifty eyes and hollow voices betray their lack of belief. They are paid to say these things, by the city of New Prospect and the state of New Jersey. They lack true faith; they are not on the Straight Path; they are unclean. Ahmad and the two thousand other students can see them scuttling after school into their cars on the crackling, trash-speckled parking lot like pale crabs or dark ones restored to their shells, and they are men and women like any others, full of lust and fear and infatuation with things that can be bought. Infidels, they think safety lies in accumulation of thethings of this world, and in the corrupting diversions of the television set. They are slaves to images, false ones of happiness and affluence. But even true images are sinful imitations of God, who can alone create. Relief at escaping their students unscathed for another day makes the teachers' chatter of farewell in the halls and on the parking lot too loud, like the rising excitement of drunks. The teachers revel when they are away from the school. Some have the pink lids and bad breaths and puffy bodies of those who habitually drink too much. Some get divorces; some live with others unmarried. Their lives away from the school are disorderly and wanton and self-indulgent. They are paid to instill virtue and democratic values by the state government down in Trenton, and that Satanic government farther down, in Washington, but the values they believe in are
Godless: biology and chemistry and physics. On the facts and formulas of these their false voices firmly rest, ringing out into the classroom. They say that all comes out of merciless blind atoms, which cause the cold weight of iron, the transparency of glass, the stillness of clay, the agitation of flesh. Electrons pour through copper threads and computer gates and the air itself when stirred to lightning by the interaction of water droplets. Only what we can measure and deduce from measurement is true. The rest is the passing dream that we call our selves.
Ahmad is eighteen. This is early April; again green sneaks, seed by seed, into the drab city's earthy crevices. He looks down from his new height and thinks that to the insects unseen in the grass he would be, if they had a consciousness like his, God. In the year past he has grown three inches, to six feet--more unseen materialist forces, working their will upon him. He will not grow any taller, he thinks, in this life or the next. If there is a next, an inner devil murmurs. What evidence beyond the Prophet's blazing and divinely inspired words proves that there is a next? Where would it be hidden? Who would forever stoke Hell's boilers? What infinite source of energy would maintain opulent Eden, feeding its dark-eyed houris, swelling its heavy-hanging fruits, renewing the streams and splashing fountains in which God, as described in the ninth sura of the Qur'an, takes eternal good pleasure? What of the second law of thermodynamics?
The deaths of insects and worms, their bodies so quickly absorbed by earth and weeds and road tar, devilishly strive to tell Ahmad that his own death will be just as small and final. Walking to school, he has noticed a sign, a spiral traced on the pavement in luminous ichor, angelic slime from the body of some low creature, a worm or snail of which only this trace remains. Where was the creature going, its path spiralling inward to no purpose? If it was seeking to remove itself from the hot sidewalk that was roasting it to death as the burning sun beat down, it failed and moved in fatal circles. But no little worm-body was left at the spiral's center.
So where did that body fly to? Perhaps it was snatched up by God and taken straight to Heaven. Ahmad's teacher, Shaikh Rashid, the imam at the mosque upstairs at 27811?2 West Main Street, tells him that according to the sacred tradition of the Hadith such things happen:
the Messenger, riding the winged white horse Buraq, was guided through the seven heavens by the angel Gabriel to a certain place, where he prayed with Jesus, Moses, and Abraham before returning to Earth, to become the last of the prophets, the ultimate one. His adventures that day are proved by the hoofprint, sharp and clear, that Buraq left on the Rock beneath the sacred Dome in the center of Al-Quds, called Jerusalem by the infidels and Zionists, whose torments in the furnaces of Jahannan are well described in the seventh and eleventh and fiftieth of the suras of the Book of Books.
Shaikh Rashid recites with great beauty of pronunciation the one hundred fourth sura, concerning Hutama, the Crushing Fire:
And who shall teach thee what the Crushing Fire is?
It is God's kindled fire,
Which shall mount above the hearts of the damned;
It shall verily rise over them like a vault,
On outstretched columns.
When Ahmad seeks to extract from the images in the Qur'an's Arabic--the outstretched columns, fi 'amadin mumaddada, and the vault high above the hearts of those huddled in terror and straining to see into the towering mist of white heat, naru l-lahi l-muqada--some hint of the Merciful's relenting at some point in time, and calling a halt to Hutama, the imam casts down his eyes, which are an unexpectedly pale gray, as milky and elusive as a kafir woman's, and says that these visionary descriptions by the Prophet are figurative. They are truly about the burning misery of separation from God and the scorching of our remorse for our sins against His commands. But Ahmad does not like Shaikh Rashid's voice when he says this. It reminds him of the unconvincing voices of his teachers at Central High. He hears Satan's undertone in it, a denying voice within an affirming voice. The Prophet meant physical fire when he preached unforgiving fire; Mohammed could not proclaim the fact of eternal fire too often.
Shaikh Rashid is not much older than Ahmad--perhaps ten years, perhaps twenty. He has few wrinkles in the white skin of his face. He is diffident though precise in his movements. In the years by which he is older, the world has weakened him. When the murmuring of the devils gnawing within him tinges the imam's voice, Ahmad feels in his own self a desire to rise up and crush him, as God roasted that poor worm at the center of the spiral. The student's faith exceeds the master's; it frightens Shaikh Rashid to be riding the winged white steed of Islam, its irresistible onrushing. He seeks to soften the Prophet's words, to make them blend with human reason, but they were not meant to blend: they invade our human softness like a sword. Allah is sublime beyond all particulars. There is no God but He, the Living, the Self-Subsistent; He is the light by which the sun looks black. He does not blend with our reason but makes our reason bow low, its forehead scraping the dust and bearing like Cain the mark of that dust. Mohammed was a mortal man but visited Paradise and consorted with the realities there. Our deeds and thoughts were written in the Prophet's consciousness in letters of gold, like the burning words of electrons that a computer creates of pixels as we tap the keyboard.
The halls of the high school smell of perfume and bodily exhalations, of chewing gum and impure cafeteria food, and of cloth-cotton and wool and the synthetic materials of running shoes, warmed by young flesh. Between classes there is a thunder of movement; the noise is stretched thin over a violence beneath, barely restrained. Sometimes in the lull at the end of the school day, when the triumphant, jeering racket of departure has subsided and only the students doing extracurricular activities remain in the great building, Joryleen Grant comes up to Ahmad at his locker. He does track in the spring; she sings in the girls' glee club. As students go at Central High, they are "good." His religion keeps him from drugs and vice, though it also holds him rather aloof from his classmates and the studies on the curriculum. She is short and round and talks well in class, pleasing the teacher. There is an endearing self-confidence in how compactly her cocoa-brown roundnesses fill her clothes, which today are patched and sequinned jeans, worn pale where she sits, and a ribbed magenta shorty top both lower and higher than it should be. Blue plastic barrettes pull her glistening hair back as straight as it will go; the plump edge of her right ear holds along its crimp a row of little silver rings. She sings in assembly programs, songs of Jesus or sexual longing, both topics abhorrent to Ahmad. Yet he is pleased that she notices him, coming up to him now and then like a tongue testing a sensitive tooth.
"Cheer up, Ahmad," she teases him. "Things can't be so bad." She rolls her half-bare shoulder, lifting it as if to shrug, to show she is being playful.
"They're not bad," he says. "I'm not sad," he tells her. His long body tingles under his clothes--white shirt, narrow-legged black jeans--from the shower after track practice.
"You're looking way serious," she tells him. "You should learn to smile more."
"Why? Why should I, Joryleen?"
"People will like you more."
"I don't care about that. I don't want to be liked."
Excerpted from Terrorist by John Updike Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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