A good book can not only help pass the time during a long flight, a day on the beach or a rainy Sunday afternoon. It's also a great way to escape and travel to exotic places filled with action and adventure. If you like something that will make you think a little more, you may want to throw politics into the mix with some gripping terrorism fiction.
Terrorism is very hard to define. It usually involves using violence to create fear, in order to bring about political or ideological changes. The group or person acts independently from governmental entities like the national military. However, who is labeled a terrorist often depends on your point of view. Some people argue that many terrorist groups are in fact liberation armies.
'The Sum of all Fears' is the title of a famous novel dealing with terrorism. It's one in the Jack Ryan series created by spy novelist Tom Clancy. Jack Ryan, who is also the hero of novels like 'Patriot Games', is an American secret agent whose work, like that of real secret agents, often involves trying to stop acts of terror and bringing the perpetrators to justice.
Terrorists aren't necessarily all male. Women have been involved in acts of terror since the beginning and someone like Leila Khaled, who hijacked planes for the Palestinian cause, became a cult heroine. John le Carre wrote 'The Little Drummer Girl' about an actress who becomes involved in the Palestinian liberation struggle initially to infiltrate a terrorist group but then because she comes to believe in the cause.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland have inspired many novels about terrorism. The Irish Republican Army was usually called a terrorist group and several books are centered around members of this organization. An example is 'A Prayer Before Dying' by Jack Higgins.
The fight against apartheid in South Africa also involved acts that were classified as terrorism by some, most notably that country's government. Anti-apartheid novels often deal with this armed struggle. For example, a gripping story is that of Thomas Landman, the hero of Andre Brink's novel 'An Act of Terror'. Landman is an Afrikaner man is drawn into the liberation movement and after a failed attempt to kill the president, has to flee.
Doris Lessing, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature, is the author of 'The Good Terrorist', about a group of very liberal but naive young people in Britain who decide to become terrorists. They aren't fighting for a specific cause but for a more general ideology. In around the 1970s, there were several similar groups all across Europe and the USA. The Red Brigades of Italy, the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof Group of West Germany and the Symbionese Liberation Army of the United States are the most notorious. It was the latter who kidnapped Patty Hearst and got her to join them.
As long as there are terrorist groups, there will be novels about them. A good place to find terrorism fiction is online but bookstores and libraries will also have a selection. This theme indeed makes for gripping reading, so be sure to switch off your phone, close the door, get some snacks and escape for a few hours into a world of intrigue.
Terrorism is very hard to define. It usually involves using violence to create fear, in order to bring about political or ideological changes. The group or person acts independently from governmental entities like the national military. However, who is labeled a terrorist often depends on your point of view. Some people argue that many terrorist groups are in fact liberation armies.
'The Sum of all Fears' is the title of a famous novel dealing with terrorism. It's one in the Jack Ryan series created by spy novelist Tom Clancy. Jack Ryan, who is also the hero of novels like 'Patriot Games', is an American secret agent whose work, like that of real secret agents, often involves trying to stop acts of terror and bringing the perpetrators to justice.
Terrorists aren't necessarily all male. Women have been involved in acts of terror since the beginning and someone like Leila Khaled, who hijacked planes for the Palestinian cause, became a cult heroine. John le Carre wrote 'The Little Drummer Girl' about an actress who becomes involved in the Palestinian liberation struggle initially to infiltrate a terrorist group but then because she comes to believe in the cause.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland have inspired many novels about terrorism. The Irish Republican Army was usually called a terrorist group and several books are centered around members of this organization. An example is 'A Prayer Before Dying' by Jack Higgins.
The fight against apartheid in South Africa also involved acts that were classified as terrorism by some, most notably that country's government. Anti-apartheid novels often deal with this armed struggle. For example, a gripping story is that of Thomas Landman, the hero of Andre Brink's novel 'An Act of Terror'. Landman is an Afrikaner man is drawn into the liberation movement and after a failed attempt to kill the president, has to flee.
Doris Lessing, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature, is the author of 'The Good Terrorist', about a group of very liberal but naive young people in Britain who decide to become terrorists. They aren't fighting for a specific cause but for a more general ideology. In around the 1970s, there were several similar groups all across Europe and the USA. The Red Brigades of Italy, the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof Group of West Germany and the Symbionese Liberation Army of the United States are the most notorious. It was the latter who kidnapped Patty Hearst and got her to join them.
As long as there are terrorist groups, there will be novels about them. A good place to find terrorism fiction is online but bookstores and libraries will also have a selection. This theme indeed makes for gripping reading, so be sure to switch off your phone, close the door, get some snacks and escape for a few hours into a world of intrigue.
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For an example of attention-grabbing terrorism fiction, visit the web pages here today. More details about titles and authors can be seen at http://rossgallenauthor.com now.
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