Eagleton

Good news! The New Statesman magazine have asked me to review Terry Eagleton's latest book Holy Terror:

Rather than add to the mounting pile of political studies of terrorism, Terry Eagleton offers here a metaphysics of terror with a serious historical perspective. Writing with remarkable clarity and persuasive insight he examines a concept whose cultural impact predates 9/11 by millennia. From its earliest manifestations in rite and ritual, through the French Revolution to the 'War on Terror' of today, terror has been regarded with both horror and fascination. Eagleton examines the duality of the sacred (both life-giving and death-dealing) and relates it, via current and past ideas of freedom, to the idea of terror itself.

Also, just out from Verso, is the paperback of Eagleton's Figures of Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, Zizek and Others (a "collection of more than a decade of ... bracing criticism, Eagleton comes face to face with Stanley Fish, Gayatri Spivak, Slavoj Zizek, Edward Said, and even David Beckham.")