Rent Terrorist

Synopsis

John Updike aims to shape the pastiche portrait of the homegrown terrorist (a la Richard Reid, John Walker, even Timothy McVeigh) into something psychologically rich and artistically profound. A lesser writer would have stumbled into threadbare stereotype, but Updike is up to the task, and his novel about Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy, an angry 18-year-old who falls under the sway of a fundamental Islamic leader, simultaneously captures the seething rage of the alienated youth, and provides a vivid window into a world of shame, hate, and outlandish schemes that could, eventually, come to catastrophic fruition.

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