Terrorist
The terrorist of John Updike’s 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 Qur’an as expounded by the imam of his neighborhood mosque, Ahmad feels his faith threatened by...
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The terrorist of John Updike’s 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 Qur’an 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 Qur’an 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 God’s purpose for him. But to quote the Qur’an: Of those who plot, God is the best.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780345493910 (0345493915)
Publish date: May 29th 2007
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Pages no: 310
Edition language: English
Well this was pretty disappointing. The premise was interesting, it wasn't the typical first person, Mary-Sue fantasy, taking place in a tween's head, and this from a famous (and supposedly great) contemporary American author, but the execution was not up to the minimal expectation I had for such a ...
I just can't do it. I tried, honestly. I got to page ten. I'm moving on.
Will he or won’t he? In this post-9/11 coming of age tale, Ahmad Mulloy-Ashmawy is a high school senior convinced that the culture in which he lives is completely unclean. Child of an Irish-American mother and a long-gone Egyptian father, he identifies with his Arabic side. By his own choice he bega...