Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #314604 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

New Directions, February 2006
This is a dazzling, clever, breathless and infuriating book.

Review
A quirky, provocative look at the metaphysics of political violence over the centuries. (Financial Times Politics Books of the Year, 2005 )

There have been plenty of rather hastily written books about terrorism in the wake of the appalling events of recent months, but for me the best was beyond question Terry Eagleton's little gem 'Holy Terror'... it offers one of the best guides I know to what matters most in Christianity. (Rowan Williams, Books of the Year, TLS )

Its central argument is right and, more to the point, welcome. (Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times )

The literature on terrorism grows by the shelf-load, but Eagleton's is a genuinely fresh take. This is a politics book in the widest sense, and it is all the better for it. (Aditya Chakrabortty, New Statesman )

A sprightly set of essays. (Steven Poole, The Guardian )

Terry Eagleton's intriguing study is admirably free from short-sightedness. A rich and finely wrought essay, which fully displays the bleakness of the human condition, yet offers, in the end, an elusive ray of hope. (John Cottingham, The Tablet )

This is Eagleton at his most interesting. Provocative, startling, and always relevant to politics. (Bill McSweeney, Irish Times )

With luck, though, Holy Terror is the opening in what could become a useful debate. (Michael Moorcock, Daily Telegraph )

Michael Moorcock, Daily Telegraph
"With luck, though, Holy Terror is the opening in what could become a useful debate."

Customer Reviews

Holy Terry! *groan*
Witty, erudite, short, persuasive and political in the best sense. Excellent at bringing out the concepts of Thanatos in Freud, jouissance in Lacan and evil in Christian (and other) moral thought, without once descending into navel-gazing, obscuratism or over-complication. Impressive also in making some political links and distinctions between socialism and barbarism, US power and terrorisms, and the balance between the strategic and the surplus in terroristic violence of all stripes.

If there is a weakness, it is that these matters are addressed too heavily towards the current moment and so not considered sufficiently in terms of other recurrent examples like war rape, aerial bombardment, certain liberal ethics of just war, famine and the like. But none of that should stop you from seeking out and devouring this little gem.