Excerpt from The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

“Since nine eleven the Americans love Sydney, because we’re beautiful and safe,” he heard Katie Moretti say. “But whatever will they think of us now with those awful bombs?” Richard Cody turned around. Something about Katie Moretti’s inane chatter had captured his attention.With a very real outrage at the graphic designer’s complete lack of interest in him, and intent on impressing the table and shaming Jerry Mendes, Richard Cody began talking with passion of the atrocities committed in London, at Beslan, in Madrid and Bali. And as he talked, Richard Cody could feel his anger happily refuelled by the resentment he felt at the people he was sitting with, who thought of terrorism only in terms of their property prices. He felt himself more and more moved by his own unexpected emotion, found himself speaking about the end of innocence and the shocking destruction of the ordinary lives of good people, and somehow the fate of people killed by terrorist bombs and his demotion by Jerry Mendes and his rejection by the graphic designer were all one and the same, and all the wounds of the world were his.

“You won’t believe this,” Katie Moretti said, “but there’s a very sexy Syrian man who comes to our Latin American dancing classes. He’s a computer programmer or something.We call him Salsa bin Laden. He’s pretty gorgeous, whatever he is.” Richard Cody felt momentarily confused, as if he had been given a cricket bat to go surfing.

“Well, if you think the death of innocent people doesn’t mean anything, say whatever you like,” said Richard Cody, who liked saying whatever he liked, and who—if others spoke when he had things to say—experienced a strange sensation that was at once rage and jealousy.

“The era of sentimentality is over,” he continued. “Our civilisation is under attack—why, even an afternoon such as this would be illegal under the new barbarians—neither wine, nor women allowed to dress as they wish, nor dancing . . .” and on and on he went, not that anyone had danced or would get the chance while he continued talking.

Richard Cody then argued for the necessity of torture, properly managed. Proper management, sensible policies, agreed procedures—it was possible, after all, to civilise something as barbaric as warfare with the Geneva Convention, and now we needed a Geneva Convention on how we might conduct torture in a civilised fashion. Sometimes Richard Cody shocked even himself with his opinions and the violence with which he forced them on others.What was even more shocking to him was how other people tended to agree meekly with him, not, he feared, because they thought he was right, but only because he was stronger, louder, more aggressive. People, he felt, merely went where they sensed power.

Still, at first, winning would bring him a feeling of pleasure in victory so acute his face would flush and his nostrils flare. But soon after, Richard Cody would realise he didn’t really believe anything he had just so passionately said. Worse, he had only argued because he felt it important that his view, and his view alone, prevail.And then everything he said seemed to him so full of hatred and ignorance, intended only to hurt and to impress, and he despised the way no one would rise to his challenge and call him the fool, the bully, the buffoon that, in his heart, he feared he was.

And because no one ever did, and because he was at once enraged and relieved that they didn’t, because they invariably shut up, because no one had the courage to speak the truth or, like the graphic designer, they simply left, Richard Cody would keep on talking and it was hard to know when, if ever, he might stop.

“This is a good world,” Richard Cody heard himself saying. “We have prosperity, beautiful homes”—here he held out a hand indicating Katie Moretti’s house, recently featured on a magazine home-decorating show on the Six Network—“some more beautiful than others”—here there was laughter—“but there is irrational evil lurking out there.”

Excerpted from The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan © 2007 by Richard Flanagan. Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.