John Updike’s newest book, Terrorist, tells the story of Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy, an eighteen-year old boy living in New Prospect, New Jersey. Ahmad is the son of an Irish-American woman and an Egyptian exchange student who abandoned his wife and son when Ahmad was three. Disgusted by his mother and her constant string of boyfriends, and unable to connect with the other students at Central High School, Ahmad falls under the guidance of Saikh Rashid, the imam of the local mosque. Ahmad has been attending the mosque since the age of 11, a decision left up to him by his free-spirited mother, and only informed by his father in so far as Ahmad seeks to identify with the man who left. With an entire boyhood and adolesence spent hearing the cynical Saikh Rashid preach against the “devils,” the Ahmad that we meet has a finely distilled disdain for American culture. “I of course do not hate all Americans,” he says. “But the American way is the way of infidels. It is headed for a terrible doom.”

The direction that the protagonist is heading stands out boldly to its contemporary American audience, and the story has clearly evolved out of the post-9/11 fear of terrorism that lines the media and society. Other characters enter into the narrative arc that brings Ahmad to his crucial decision, such as a girl at his high school, Joryleen, and her boyfriend, Tylenol; Jack Levy, the Jewish guidance counselor, and his offensively obese wife. This gripping story, told with all of the alternatingly elevated and gritty elements of Updike’s prose, seeths with the fears that pervade modern culture.

Read a review here.