Thomas Jones writes:
Ahmad has no friends, no siblings, an absent father and a mother he barely sees. But he is not lonely, or does not believe himself to be lonely, because God is constantly present to him, ‘as close as a vein in his neck’. And it’s not quite right, or not quite fair, to say baldly that he hates America; certainly, he wouldn’t put it that way himself. ‘These devils seek to take away my God,’ is how he expresses it . . . At a time when so much official discourse is directed at merely demonising suicide bombers, defining them as an unknowable enemy, terrifyingly evil but reassuringly other, Updike’s project – to explore a set of circumstances that might explain how an American teenager could find himself driving a truck full of explosives towards New York City with the express intention of killing both himself and as many of his fellow citizens as possible – seems an important one. He may not have any answers, but at least he is trying to ask a different set of questions. The world repays careful attention; few writers are as good as Updike at looking at and describing it so precisely.

Penguin Books Ltd | Paperback 320 pp. |ISBN: 9780141027845