O Pioneer

Charles McGrath interviews John Updike over at the New York Times about his new novel, Terrorist. A snippet:

[Updike] went on: “I think I felt I could understand the animosity and hatred which an Islamic believer would have for our system. Nobody’s trying to see it from that point of view. I guess I have stuck my neck out here in a number of ways, but that’s what writers are for, maybe.”

Hmm. Yeah. Nobody. Except for Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), Nadeem Aslam (Maps for Lost Lovers), Slimane Benaissa (The Last Night of A Damned Soul), Alaa Al-Aswany (The Yacoubian Building), and half of contemporary Algerian novelists.