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The American Ambassador
The author of Jack Gance, a renowned D.C. insider, reaps more rave reviews with this suspenseful novel combining international politics and terrorism with a father-son conflict. Seasoned and loyal American ambassador William North's only disappointment is his estranged son, Bill, Jr., who is a prominent member of a terrorist group, whose next target is the ambassador.
- GenresFiction
320 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1987
13 people are currently reading
152 people want to read
About the author
Ward Just
36 books83 followersWard Just was a war correspondent, novelist, and short story author.
Ward Just graduated from Cranbrook School in 1953. He briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.
His influences include Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. His novel An Unfinished Season was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story "About Boston," and again in 1986 for his short story "The Costa Brava, 1959." His fiction is often concerned with the influence of national politics on Americans' personal lives. Much of it is set in Washington, D.C., and foreign countries. Another common theme is the alienation felt by Midwesterners in the East.
Ward Just graduated from Cranbrook School in 1953. He briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.
His influences include Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. His novel An Unfinished Season was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story "About Boston," and again in 1986 for his short story "The Costa Brava, 1959." His fiction is often concerned with the influence of national politics on Americans' personal lives. Much of it is set in Washington, D.C., and foreign countries. Another common theme is the alienation felt by Midwesterners in the East.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 29, 2019
What brings a son to believe his father is an enemy to be destroyed? This is the dramatic question which underpins The American Ambassador.
Ward Just's are never simple books: they are generally based on a complex construct which includes the events of the plot, the events of the interior, moral life of the protagonists and some important historical and/or political backdrop. In some instances, one elements takes over the others and then the cohesiveness of the story collapses and it departs, rambling, for an uncertain destination. When instead the chemistry works and all the above elements blend together harmoniously, the result is delicious and it makes a highly enjoyable and profound read. This is what happens in his best books - at least in my humble opinion: definitely Echo House and A Dangerous Friend; The American Ambassador is one of these happy results.
The story shifts continually between reality and a haze of memories and feverish hallucinations of a father trying to make reason of what happened to his son, to answer a tormenting question which has no answer.
"Moral ambiguity", a constant theme of Ward Just's books, is here more central than ever; quite a read.
Ward Just's are never simple books: they are generally based on a complex construct which includes the events of the plot, the events of the interior, moral life of the protagonists and some important historical and/or political backdrop. In some instances, one elements takes over the others and then the cohesiveness of the story collapses and it departs, rambling, for an uncertain destination. When instead the chemistry works and all the above elements blend together harmoniously, the result is delicious and it makes a highly enjoyable and profound read. This is what happens in his best books - at least in my humble opinion: definitely Echo House and A Dangerous Friend; The American Ambassador is one of these happy results.
The story shifts continually between reality and a haze of memories and feverish hallucinations of a father trying to make reason of what happened to his son, to answer a tormenting question which has no answer.
"Moral ambiguity", a constant theme of Ward Just's books, is here more central than ever; quite a read.
April 12, 2022
Not sure how to convey how deeply this book impacted me. Few books have moved me and not one comes to mind that has moved me to this degree. The uniquiness of Ward Just's narrative style sets the tone for the story. The reader is immediately immersed in the lives of the family that is the epecenter of the conflicting ideologies that exist between young and old, big governmental socieltal involvement and laissez-faire societies and finally, stablity verses chaos.
What makes this read so striking is that the entire story is told by conversations/memories of each of the characters while moving seamlessly from present to past and then back to the present. This personalizes each character and we as the readers become that person (or at least empathetic). Its hard to hate any of the characters although there is plenty of reasons to dislike them all. Ward Just compels the reader to understand (and even develop sympathy for) the flaws of the father, mother, son and his partner. I ended up liking them all even all were severly deficient of the qualities I would assign to "good" people.
I will most likely amend this review as I think about the book and how it has impacted me.
What makes this read so striking is that the entire story is told by conversations/memories of each of the characters while moving seamlessly from present to past and then back to the present. This personalizes each character and we as the readers become that person (or at least empathetic). Its hard to hate any of the characters although there is plenty of reasons to dislike them all. Ward Just compels the reader to understand (and even develop sympathy for) the flaws of the father, mother, son and his partner. I ended up liking them all even all were severly deficient of the qualities I would assign to "good" people.
I will most likely amend this review as I think about the book and how it has impacted me.
July 6, 2016
Radicalized children and establishment parents are the protagonists in Ward Just's The American Ambassador. Not the Middle East but Western European extremist politics and the conflict between generations and belief systems are the subjects of this novel by a great but relatively unknown writer.
October 6, 2012
This a novel worth reading. The real draw is the ambassador's son, who just walks away from his parents one evening in Hamburg and finds himself a marxist terrorist group to join. Soon he's kidnapping, bombing and murdering with rest of them.
We get a good luck inside the son's head. What Just shows us is not marxist cant, but the underlying attitude: the son believes there are two kinds of people in the world: the exploiters and the exploited, and the exploited will not be free until the exploiters are shot dead.
He sees his parents as exploiters who live in a dream world. They are hypocrites. The novel is fascinating in showing how he interprets people and events in a completely different way from his parents and from normal people in general. He hates Thanksgiving, for example. He distances himself from his parents. He refers to his father as "the ambassador" or just "he"; never as "Dad" or even "my father."
He falls in love with the daughter of another terrorist. She's damaged. Perhaps she's a bit autistic. Perhaps she just lives in her own world. She has been traumatized by her father and one of his comrades. The son loves her because she seems like a pure innocent. He coaxes her out of her shell a bit. Soon she murders with an almost beatific attitude.
The son is a great example of how the marxist only sees "objective conditions." There is no understanding of good intentions or even anybody else's subjectivity (except his girlfrend's) in him at all. His detachment as chilling, as evidenced by an incident when he was in boarding school where he stood by while his roommate beat up a teacher.
Unfortunately, there is too little of the son and his angel-assassin. A lot of the novel is spent with the parents, who are nice people but not all that interesting. We follow Dad through his medical trials. As a diplomat in Africa he was almost blown up by rebels/bandits when the son was five, and he is plagued by small bits of shrapnel embedded in his flesh. One of them works its way to his neck and paralyzes his left hand. I'm sure that this is all terribly metaphorical, but I just didn't get it.
Mom is a slightly interesting character. Her resentment and occasional drunken eagerness to tell inappropriate truths in front of guests gives the reader some hint of where the son gets his problems from. This connection is underdeveloped.
One of the problem's with Just's novels - and this is the third I've read - is that he stretches a short story or novella's worth of story out to the length of a novel. That's somewhat less true here, but the stuff with the parents goes on too long. Absolutely worth reading for the son, however.
We get a good luck inside the son's head. What Just shows us is not marxist cant, but the underlying attitude: the son believes there are two kinds of people in the world: the exploiters and the exploited, and the exploited will not be free until the exploiters are shot dead.
He sees his parents as exploiters who live in a dream world. They are hypocrites. The novel is fascinating in showing how he interprets people and events in a completely different way from his parents and from normal people in general. He hates Thanksgiving, for example. He distances himself from his parents. He refers to his father as "the ambassador" or just "he"; never as "Dad" or even "my father."
He falls in love with the daughter of another terrorist. She's damaged. Perhaps she's a bit autistic. Perhaps she just lives in her own world. She has been traumatized by her father and one of his comrades. The son loves her because she seems like a pure innocent. He coaxes her out of her shell a bit. Soon she murders with an almost beatific attitude.
The son is a great example of how the marxist only sees "objective conditions." There is no understanding of good intentions or even anybody else's subjectivity (except his girlfrend's) in him at all. His detachment as chilling, as evidenced by an incident when he was in boarding school where he stood by while his roommate beat up a teacher.
Unfortunately, there is too little of the son and his angel-assassin. A lot of the novel is spent with the parents, who are nice people but not all that interesting. We follow Dad through his medical trials. As a diplomat in Africa he was almost blown up by rebels/bandits when the son was five, and he is plagued by small bits of shrapnel embedded in his flesh. One of them works its way to his neck and paralyzes his left hand. I'm sure that this is all terribly metaphorical, but I just didn't get it.
Mom is a slightly interesting character. Her resentment and occasional drunken eagerness to tell inappropriate truths in front of guests gives the reader some hint of where the son gets his problems from. This connection is underdeveloped.
One of the problem's with Just's novels - and this is the third I've read - is that he stretches a short story or novella's worth of story out to the length of a novel. That's somewhat less true here, but the stuff with the parents goes on too long. Absolutely worth reading for the son, however.
August 24, 2014
This was hard to follow initially because of shifts in time, location, and points of view, but well worth it. In a prologue, the ambassador’s son recalls observing his father discussing politics and condemning him as part of a corrupt, decadent America. Later the ambassador learns that the CIA suspects his son of terrorist involvement. The ambassador also, as a young man, confronted his father over the government, and angrily declared his intent to become a diplomat. In his complex book, Just asks, how does the personal become political, the political, personal? This insightful book examines the influence of history, memory, father-son relationships, loyalty, compromise, consequences. Sensitively written, atmospheric. Ward deserves to be much better known.
Published in 1987, this book is frighteningly relevant. A quote: His father “was frightened of America. America’s potential, its reach, its grab, its ignorance of the dark side of things. America had no understanding of true malevolence.”
Published in 1987, this book is frighteningly relevant. A quote: His father “was frightened of America. America’s potential, its reach, its grab, its ignorance of the dark side of things. America had no understanding of true malevolence.”
November 25, 2022
As if Vince Flynn tried to write Proust. In this way, it reads almost exactly as what it actually is: a political novelist with ambitions grander than that. It’s not so much that he doesn’t succeed at them either; it’s just that there’s very little to succeed at. The story, such as it is, sits there, and takes on the superfluous weight given it. Nonetheless, the good-will is genuine enough, and the reader wants to give it that room to expand as it apparently wants to, because she can tell that there is movement held latent therein. Unleashing it, however, does not seem to be something that Just is very interested in doing. He’d much rather meander repetitively through several set pieces established within the first 80 pages, and then revisit them continuously thereafter.
May 15, 2014
Very engaging story, about a family riven by....political differences? ...mental illness? At the end of the book I found I am still unsure. I was caught up in the story: the beautifully described reminiscences of protagonist's pasts, the bewilderment of the parents at the antagonism of their child, the attendant anguish, the conflicting loyalties to family and country.
What I found less convincing was the reasons for the son's animosity. They just weren't supplied. This lack partially guts the central premise of the story, which is a major flaw. Still, Mr. Just is a very strong writer, and I plan to read more of his works.
What I found less convincing was the reasons for the son's animosity. They just weren't supplied. This lack partially guts the central premise of the story, which is a major flaw. Still, Mr. Just is a very strong writer, and I plan to read more of his works.
March 26, 2014
A gripping yet nuanced novel by one of America's best writers.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews