TERRORIST - Scarce Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by John Updike - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE

Updike, John

ISBN 10: 0307264653 / ISBN 13: 9780307264657

Edité par New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, 2006

A propos de cet article

1st Printing. Signed. 310 pages. Published in 2006. The author's 22nd novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. Subsequent printings do not have the topstain that has become a trademark of Updike's handsomely produced books. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents John Updike's "Terrorist'. Ostensibly Updike's exploration of spirituality, religion, and fanaticism, themes he explored in such novels as "The Coup" and "Toward The End of Time". Updike's genuine achievement is his protagonist, Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, the 18-year-old American suicide bomber/son of a present Irish mother and an absent Egyptian father. "He's my hero. I tried to understand him and to dramatize his world. Besides it's not just young Muslims who are killing themselves. We have all these American high school students, steeped in Protestantism and Judaism, who bring guns to school to shoot up the cafeteria knowing they're going to die at the end of this rush" (John Updike). "Tells his story with the thrilling, gorgeous prose we have come to expect of him. A terrible beauty" (Alden Mudge). Written in Updike's characteristic lapidary style: Chiseled, polished, impeccable. There is such a thing as a John Updike line or sentence in the sense that there isn't in any other living American writer today. Susan Sontag regarded him as the finest stylist in the English language of our time. An absolute "must-have" title for John Updike collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by John Updike. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Signed copies of John Updike's Hardcover First Editions are more scarce than the Limited Editions because he seldom did public signings and limited the number of books when he did. A scarce signed copy thus. A writer all his adult life, John Updike was probably the most-honored American writer of our time: Winner of numerous awards, among them the Guggenheim Fellowship (1959), Rosenthal Award, National Institute of Arts and Letters (1959), National Book Award for Fiction (1964), O. Henry Prize (1967-68), American Book Award (1982), National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (1982, 1990), Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award (1982), National Arts Club Medal of Honor (1984), and the National Medal of the Arts (1989), the highest award the U. S. Government bestows on its artists and writers. In 1976, he became a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003, Updike received the National Medal for Humanities, joining a very small group of great living Americans who have been honored with both the National Medal of the Arts and the National Medal for the Humanities. Updike's greatest novels, "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit At Rest", won Pulitzer Prizes. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JOHN UPDIKE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0307264653.

N° de réf. du vendeur 11668

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: TERRORIST - Scarce Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by John Updike - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE
• Éditeur: New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006
• Date de parution: 2006
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0307264653
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780307264657
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition.
• État de l'article: Fine
• État de la jaquette: Fine
• Signé: Signed by Author

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

From one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century—and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series: “A chilling tale that is perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from September 11” (People) about an eighteen-year-old devoted to Allah, who’s convinced he’s discovered God’s purpose for him. 

“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.” —The New York Times Book Review

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.

À propos de l'auteur

JOHN UPDIKE was the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels, including The Centaur, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in 2009.