Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I have an author here, who I've wanted to talk to for such a long time, that I'm afraid of being overwhelmed by the number of things I want to talk to him about. But we're going

to talk first about his new novel, Terrorist, which has been published by Alfred A. Knopf.

It is what? The most recent of some 22 novels, 23.

22.

And, you know, those began with the Poor House Fair, Rabbit Run.

I mean, unthinkable of a writer writing Rabbit Run as a second novel.

The Centaur of the Farm, just to name them is to name a real, well, they're all entries in the

great American novels. Now, terrorist begins, oh, yes, and I haven't mentioned his name.

It's John Updike. I feel that the author of Rabbit Run doesn't even need naming, let alone introduction.

And the new novel is Terrorist.

Terrorist begins with its young, potentially suicide bomber character, thinking, devils, these devils seek to take away my God.

And it ends, on a somewhat different note, he's learned something.

He thinks, these devils have taken away my God.

And I wanted to ask you because what he fears at the beginning is not what he realizes at the end.

No?

It seems to me that the God that they've taken away, they've taken away his idea of what a God can be,

...