EXCERPT Why Dostoevsky? Because we live in an age of terrorism. As I noted in chapter 1, the age of the tourist is also the age of the terrorist, and many of Dostoevsky’s novels deal with the terrorist. Dostoevsky was a novelist fixated on the question of how one could avoid becoming a terrorist in an era where faith and justice have been lost. Dostoevsky’s writing is deeply related to terror, Demons, written between 1871 and 1872, being a prime example. The protagonist of Demons Nikolai Stavrogin may well be the most famous terrorist in literary history. Demons depicts the hesitations and internal feuds among a group of young terrorists associated with Stavrogin. The novel is said to have been inspired by an actual event (the Nechayev Incident) which occurred shortly before its writing. Even when not dealing with terror directly, many of Dostoevsky’s novels are written in close proximity to the terrorist psyche. Notes from the Underground (1864) gloomily tallies the depraved curses of a man who has failed in life. Crime and Punishment (1866) is the story of a young man who develops a drawn-out, sophisticated theory in order to justify his murder of an old woman. The desire of these characters is to unleash their perverse anger upon the world and to destroy the lives of those who live in peace. Dostoevsky’s depictions of them are reminiscent of the psychology of homegrown terrorists with no organisation or ideology in the United States and Europe today. As I will discuss below, The Brothers Karamazov, written between 1879 and 1880, is also a work whose unwritten sequel, many have suggested, would have featured a protagonist who becomes a terrorist. Dostoevsky depicted terrorists in his work up until the very end of his life. …