John Updike, página 2 de 10

More than three decades have passed since the events described in "The Witches of Eastwick." Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie had each remarried and left town. Now all three are widowed and have returned to the Rhode Island seaside town in this long-awaited follow-up.

Starred Review. Ripped from the headlines doesn't begin to describe Updike's latest, a by-the-numbers novelization of the last five years' news reports on the dangers of home-grown terror that packs a gut punch. Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is 18 and attends Central High School in the New York metro area working class city of New Prospect, N.J. He is the son of an Egyptian exchange student who married a working-class Irish-American girl and then disappeared when Ahmad was three. Ahmad, disgusted by his mother's inability to get it together, is in the thrall of Shaikh Rashid, who runs a storefront mosque and preaches divine retribution for "devils," including the "Zionist dominated federal government." The list of devils is long: it includes Joryleen Grant, the wayward African-American girl with a heart of gold; Tylenol Jones, a black tough guy with whom Ahmad obliquely competes for Joryleen's attentions (which Ahmad eventually pays for); Jack Levy, a Central High guidance counselor who at 63 has seen enough failure, including his own, to last him a lifetime (and whose Jewishness plays a part in a manner unthinkable before 9/11); Jack's wife, Beth, as ineffectual and overweight (Updike is merciless on this) as she is oblivious; and Teresa Mulloy, a nurse's aide and Sunday painter as desperate for Jack's attention, when he takes on Ahmad's case, as Jack is for hers.

When a history professor - Alfred Clayton, the hero of John Updike's fifteenth novel - is asked to record his impressions of the Ford Administration, he recalls a turbulent piece of personal history as well: his unfinished book on 19th-century president James Buchanan.

"Terrorista", a primeira obra en galego de John Updike, é a historia de Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, un mozo de dezaoito anos que vive en New Prospect, unha antiga vila industrial do estado de Nova Jersey. Fillo de nai irlandesa-americana e de pai exipcio, que os abandona cando non tiña mais que tres anos, Ahmad non soubo nunca atopar o seu lugar na sociedade na que vive. Furioso coa sua nai, por non ter conseguido manter unida a familia, adopta aos once anos a fe do pai, o islam, refuxiandose na influencia do xeque Rashid, o iman da mesquita da Rua West Main. A pesar de contar cun grande potencial para os estudos, como lle recorda Jack Levy, o orientador do seu instituto, un xudeo renegado e infeliz que o aconsella ingresar na Universidade, decide obter o carne de condutor de camions para comezar a traballar de transportista, como lle recomenda o iman. E asi como lle chega a proposta clave da sua vida: facer estourar un camion cargado con catro toneladas de dinamita nun dos principais tuneis de Nova York. Para Ahmad esta e unha mision elevada que o afastaria da superficialidade e o materialismo da cultura norteamericana que aborrece, un acto suicida que lle permitiria dar a vida por Ala."Terrorista", a primeira obra en galego de John Updike, é a historia de Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, un mozo de dezaoito anos que vive en New Prospect, unha antiga vila industrial do estado de Nova Jersey. Fillo de nai irlandesa-americana e de pai exipcio, que os abandona cando non tiña mais que tres anos, Ahmad non soubo nunca atopar o seu lugar na sociedade na que vive. Furioso coa sua nai, por non ter conseguido manter unida a familia, adopta aos once anos a fe do pai, o islam, refuxiandose na influencia do xeque Rashid, o iman da mesquita da Rua West Main. A pesar de contar cun grande potencial para os estudos, como lle recorda Jack Levy, o orientador do seu instituto, un xudeo renegado e infeliz que o aconsella ingresar na Universidade, decide obter o carne de condutor de camions para comezar a traballar de transportista, como lle recomenda o iman. E asi como lle chega a proposta clave da sua vida: facer estourar un camion cargado con catro toneladas de dinamita nun dos principais tuneis de Nova York. Para Ahmad esta e unha mision elevada que o afastaria da superficialidade e o materialismo da cultura norteamericana que aborrece, un acto suicida que lle permitiria dar a vida por Ala.

More than three decades have passed since the events described in John Updike´s The Witches of Eastwick. The three divorcées_Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie_have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world, to such foreign lands as Canada, Egypt, and China, and renew old acquaintance. Why not, Sukie and Jane ask Alexandra, go back to Eastwick for the summer? Han transcurrido más de tres décadas desde los acontecimientos descritos en "The Witches of Eastwick", de John Updike. Las tres divorciadas, Alexandra, Jane, y Sukie, han dejado la ciudad, se han vuelto a casar, y se han convertido en viudas. Ahora, intentan asimilar su tristeza y su soledad como hacen las viudas: viajan por el mundo, a lugares tan diversos como Canadá, Egipto y China, y renuevan viejas amistades. ¿Y por qué no, como Sukie y Jane preguntan a Alexandra, vuelven a Eastwick para pasar las vacaciones de verano?

John Updike has written a brilliant novel that ranks among the most provocative of his distinguished career. Terrorist is the story of Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, an alienated American-born teenager who spurns the materialistic, hedonistic life he witnesses in the slumping New Jersey factory town he calls home. Turning to the words of the Holy Qur'an as expounded to him by the pedantic imam of a local mosque, Ahmad devotes himself fervently to God. Neither the world-weary guidance counselor at his high school nor Ahmad's mischievously seductive classmate Joryleen succeeds in deflecting him from his course, as the threads of an insidious plot gather around him. "One compelling and surprising ride."-USA Today "The startlingly contemporary story of a high school student . . . whose zealous Islamic faith and disaffection with modern life make him a pawn in the larger conflict between Muslim and Christian, East and West. They also make him a powerful voice for Updike's ongoing critique of American civilization."

On a spring day in Vermont, seventy-nine-year-old painter Hope Chafetz tells the story of her life to Kathryn, a young interviewer from New York. Questions send Hope back to her youth, to the heady postwar days of American art and her relationships with the artists who defined their times. As the day wears on, Kathryn and Hope - interviewer and interviewee - try to understand one another across the gulf of age, experience and time that lies between them. And subtly, as each comes to know the other, their relationship changes . . .

More than three decades have passed since the events described in The Witches of Eastwick and the three divorcees - Alexandra, Jane and Sukie - have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world to exotic lands such as Canada, China and Egypt and renew old acquaintances. And then, one summer, they decide to go back to Eastwick. The old Rhode Island seaside town where they once indulged in sensuous mischief still holds enchantment for the three, but it also holds memories, and there are those who remember them and wish them ill . . .

New York advertising man brings his new family to visit the farm of his youth, thereby encountering ghosts of the past.

Il tempo passa inesorabile anche per Alexandra, Jane e Sukie, le amichette del diavolo. Trent'anni dopo gli avvenimenti narrati nelle "Streghe di Eastwick", le tre protagoniste si sono separate per rifarsi una vita con i loro nuovi mariti, in luoghi lontani dalla cittadina che le ha viste compiere tanti misfatti. Improvvisamente però Alexandra perde il consorte e decide di riallacciare i contatti con Jane, che a sua volta le annuncia la propria repentina vedovanza. Per far fronte al dolore, le due amiche si concedono un viaggio in Egitto, e al ritorno trovano una lettera di Sukie che comunica loro la scomparsa del terzo, sfortunato marito. La congrega può ricostituirsi, tutti i tasselli combaciano di nuovo. Perché non tornare insieme, almeno per un'estate, sul luogo del delitto? Alexandra inizialmente è contraria, a causa degli orribili eventi capitati in passato, quando le tre streghe avevano sconvolto la placida esistenza degli abitanti di Eastwick sotto la guida del diabolico Darryl Van Home. Ma questa può essere l'ultima occasione per sistemare le numerose questioni rimaste in sospeso, e magari riallacciare vecchi rapporti, sopire angosce e rancori. Così le tre donne si mettono in viaggio, senza sapere che nell'ombra le attende ancora il maligno, celato sotto insospettabili sembianze. Misterioso, sulfureo e coinvolgente, "Le vedove di Eastwick" è il congedo di un grande scrittore americano. Comienzo página

"He is a religious writer; he is a comic realist; he knows what everything feels like, how everything works. He is putting together a body of work which in substantial intelligent creation will eventually be seen as second to none in our time." —William H. Pritchard, The Hudson Review, reviewing Museums and Women (1972) A harvest and not a winnowing, The Early Stories preserves almost all of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and 1975. The stories are arranged in eight sections, of which the first, "Olinger Stories," already appeared as a paperback in 1964; in its introduction, Updike described Olinger, Pennsylvania, as "a square mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by a bend in the central avenue that compels some side streets to deviate from the grid pattern." These eleven tales, whose heroes age from ten to over thirty but remain at heart Olinger boys, are followed by groupings titled "Out in the World," "Married Life," and "Family Life," tracing a common American trajectory. Family life is disrupted by the advent of "The Two Iseults," a bifurcation originating in another small town, Tarbox, Massachusetts, where the Puritan heritage co-exists with post-Christian morals. "Tarbox Tales" are followed by "Far Out," a group of more or less experimental fictions on the edge of domestic space, and "The Single Life," whose protagonists are unmarried and unmoored. Of these one hundred three stories, eighty first appeared in The New Yorker, and the other twenty-three in journals from the enduringAtlantic Monthly and Harper's to the defunct Big Table and Transatlantic Review. All show Mr. Updike's wit and verbal felicity, his reverence for ordinary life, and his love of the transient world. From the Hardcover edition.

John Updike s twentieth novel, like his first, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), takes place in one day, a day that contains much conversation and some rain. The seventy-eight-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer named Kathryn, and recapitulates, through the story of her own career, the triumphant, poignant saga of postwar American art. In the evolving relation between the two women, the interviewer and interviewee move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother, therapist and patient, predator and prey, supplicant and idol. The scene is central Vermont; the time is the early spring of 2001.

In an evolving relationship between two women - interviewer and interviewee - the women move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother, therapist and patient, predator and prey, annunciatory ang

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all.