Pearl Abraham - American Taliban

96 kbps, Unabridged, Read by Jay Snyder
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/american-taliban-pearl-abraham/1100393134?ean=9781588369789.

NOTE - This is one of those obnoxious BrillianceAudio books wherein every CD has been divided into 99 tracks. I have ripped the CDs using EAC, converted them to MP3 using dBPoweramp, and then stitched them together into one big track using MP3surgeon.

Overview
An avid, near-six-foot-tall surfer, John Jude Parish cuts a striking figure on the beaches of the Outer Banks in North Carolina. When he isn’t on water, John lives on wheels, a self-described skate rat—grinding and kickflipping with his friends, and encouraged by his progressive parents. His hero is the great explorer Richard Burton, his personal prophet is Bob Dylan, and his world is wide open—to new ideas, philosophies, and religions.

Through online forums and chat rooms, John meets a young woman from Brooklyn who spurs his interest in Islam and Arab literature. Deferring Brown University for a year, he moves to the idyllic New York borough to study Arabic. Like Burton, John embraces the experience heart, body, and soul—submitting to Islam, practicing the salaat, fasting and meditating, dancing with dervishes, and encountering the extraordinary. Burton lived the life of a nineteenth-century adventurer, but he also penetrated the ancient wisdom of secret worlds. John will too—with unforeseen consequences.
Critically acclaimed novelist Pearl Abraham uses her gifts of psychological acuity and uncommon empathy to depict a typical upper-middle-class family snared by the forces of history, politics, and faith. In American Taliban, she imagines this young surfer/skater on a distinctly American spiritual journey that begins with Transcendentalism and countercultural impulses, enters into world mysticism, and finds its destination in Islam.

Provocative, unsettling, and written in a brilliantly inventive, refreshingly original voice, American Taliban is poised to become one of the most talked-about novels of the year.

Library Journal
What would lead a young American man with a privileged upbringing to convert to Islam and join the mujahideen movement in Afghanistan? Drawing obvious parallels to the true story of John Walker Lindh (whose case is directly referenced in the novel's concluding section), Abraham (The Romance Reader) creates a plausible series of events leading John Jude Parish from a carefree summer of surfing and skateboarding to taking up arms against the West. With supportive and open-minded but indulgent parents, John has an interest in world religion and philosophy, typical coming-of-age questions, confusion about love and sexuality, and a desire to be a part of an indefinable "truth," all of which draw him incrementally deeper into radical Islam. The reader's awareness of the inevitable outcome doesn't make it any less heartbreaking. VERDICT The author has taken a complex and volatile subject and brought it to a human scale, without compromising or trivializing the global importance of the issues raised. An incredible achievement; highly recommended