NORWAY — Local teacher Jason Trask has written a novel about an Arab-American Muslim man directly impacted by the paranoia felt by many Americians after 9/11.

“I’m Not Muhammad” follows the “extraordinary rendition” of Yusuf Alsawari, a graduate student married to an American woman. (“Extraordinary rendition” refers to the capture and interrogation of suspected terrorists by U.S. government agents.)

Alsawar arouses the suspicion of the CIA when he changes his name shortly after 9/11. He does this because he decides to leave his wife and doesn’t want her to know where he is.

“I’m Not Muhammad” is available at www.amazon.com as well as at area bookstores, including Books N Things in Norway, the Maine Bookhouse in Oxford, Bridgton Books in Bridgton, Longfellow Books in Portland and Nonesuch Books in Scarborough.

Trask teaches at the Streaked Mountain School, Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School’s off-site alternative-education program. He, his wife and their three sons moved to Maine from New York City nearly 17 years ago. He spent most of his childhood in Dixfield.

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