Publication date is August 4, 2022

The book is a gripping memoir: Nabil Khouri’s journey from Arab militant to proud American.

As a young boy growing up in Jordan in the 1960s, there were only two things he believed in: the power of his automatic rifle and the certainty that Western culture was evil. THE YOUNG TERRORIST recounts his transformation from a proud member of a Palestinian militia group to an even prouder American citizen.

Nabil spent much of his youth in Jordan. He experienced the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, as well as civil wars in Jordan (a conflict known as Black September) and Lebanon in the 1970s. At the age of eleven, he joined the Arabic Liberation Front (ALF) not out of any great allegiance to the Palestinian cause but for a child’s reason: It would convince the Jordanian Muslim boys to stop bullying him for being a Lebanese Christian.

This memoir describes what followed: his experiences confronting death and violence as a preteen terror group member, the first tastes of Western culture as a teen in Spain, an unexpected return to the Middle East during Lebanon’s civil war, and his escape to America. Becoming immersed in the group’s radical militia ideology warped his sense of identity and tore at the fabric of his family. However, he ultimately appreciated the opportunities and freedoms of life and education in the United States, unlocking his own “American dream.”

Winner, GOLD MEDAL, Eric Hoffer Book Award