Who will pen the next important terrorism novel? Delillo? Houellebecq? If you guessed Updike, then you are correct. The L.A. Times chats with the 73-year-old, not-ready-for-Stockholm writer about his upcoming novel, The Terrorist, about an American teenager of Middle Eastern descent who finds solace in the bosom of Islamic fundamentalism.

Doubtless this will propel Updike a nose ahead of Roth and Oates in the three-way race of (overly) prolific American novelists gunning for the Nobel. Roth made real headway, to be sure, with The Plot Against America, but don't count out Joyce Carol Oates's talent for rendering violence and bloodshed on the page; she needs only to marry said violence to the proper, internationally relevant landscape. Genocide anyone?