John Updike

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John Updike
8 pm, June 8, 2006
Herbst Theatre, San Francisco

John Updike is an icon of American Literature. A perennial and premiere chronicler of modern life, Updike is the author of more than forty books which have been honored by the Pulitzer Prize on two occasions, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, among numerous others. Updike?s novels include the Rabbit Angstrom quartet (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit At Rest), In the Beauty of the Lilies, Couples, The Witches of Eastwick, The Coup, Marry Me, and Villages. Terrorist is the most recent publication in Updike?s prolific body of work. The novel follows eighteen-year-old Ahmad, an Irish-Egyptian American, who lives a disenchanted life in New Jersey and commits himself to an act of terror. Terrorist is a powerful drama that questions self-sacrifice, spirituality, and insidious determination and offers no easy answers in a complicated story of religious extremism. Updike has also written a memoir, Self-Consciousness, and several volumes of short fiction, poetry, and criticism, including Still Looking: Essays on American Art. His work regularly appears in The New Yorker, where he was formerly a staff writer.