The story centers on an American-born Muslim teenager named Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, although Ahmad's high school life guidance counselor, Jack Levy, also plays a central role. The novel seeks to explore the worldview and motivations of religious fundamentalists (specifically within Islam), while at the same time dissecting the morals and lifeways of residents of the fictional decaying New Jersey Rust Belt suburb of "New Prospect" (which Updike has identified with Paterson, New Jersey, also the setting of his novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies[2]).
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