In recent years, Updike showed a willingness to take risks in his works.

Shifting from his usual suburban settings, Updike wrote novels about a modern-day Tristan and Iseult in Rio de Janeiro (“Brazil,” 1994), Hollywood (“In the Beauty of the Lilies,” 1996), a “prequel” to “Hamlet” (“Gertrude and Claudius,” 2000), and the post-9/11 world (“Terrorist,” 2006).

He is seen here with Penn Brown and Alexandra Marshall at the Boston Public Library Literary Lights dinner on Mar. 3, 1989.