I am currently deep in the research and writing phase of my upcoming book, Stories of the Minotaur. 

Terrorism is the darkened ground where we grow our own monsters. Historically commentators on terrorism have likened it to mythical beasts – the hydra of carnage, the monster from the depths, the serpent of jihadist violence, or the vengeful fire bearing figure who turns everything to ashes like some kind of dragon from the belly of a war torn city. Mythic images weave in and out of the clinically detached language of terrorism, counter terrorism, and intelligence operations. Geopolitics and rational actor theories of political violence get overlaid with stories of grievance and revenge, machismo and grief. Terrorism is spectacle, its randomness as much part of the horror as the actual violence itself. The secretive world of terrorism and the clandestine world of counter terrorism are visible only in brief flashes of violence, that penetrate public consciousness in a random event and then fade back into some dark, impenetrable labyrinth with its own lexicon and its own narratives.

Using the Minotaur as an anchoring device, this book explores the origin stories of terrorism, its enduring resonance across political and religious ideologies, and the special role of the Holy Land in the spread of terrorism beyond geographic borders. It will look at the cultural narratives that underlay terrorism’s most enduring myths, the incubation of contested identities, and the evolving nature of information warfare within violent groups. In the company of poets and writers, this book will enter into the dark labyrinth where the Minotaur lives, the place where terrorism is the most compelling story of all.

As part of writing Stories of the Minotaur, I am developing a unique visual language for the book. Based in the ancient manuscripts and maps of the Byzantine, Orthodox and Catholic calligraphers and monastics, this aesthetic will give me a visual language to tell some of the stories from within terrorism’s violent subcultures and narratives. This could be a timeline that charts the major shifts in terrorism from the early days of the Red Army Brigade, IRA, and Sendero Luminoso to the proliferation of muhadjadeen that emerged from the Afghani and Chechen wars. It could be an infographic that shows the networked ideologies and funding models of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi or a map that illustrates the ideological evolution of Al Qaeda’s near and far jihad operations since the 1990s, It could be a diagram that shows the links between the Armenian Genocide and the beginnings of the Armenian Liberation Army. Drawing from my deep love of the artisans and monastics that captured a way of understanding human behaviour that is both utterly beautiful and deeply insightful, this visual language gives me a way to describe the inside of a hidden world and to find its overlooked stories.

I will be using my Instagram as a Researchers Notebook to craft this visual language and share fascinating snippets from my research inside the Minotaur’s Labyrinth.