ED. NOTE: Ian McEwan, who is living in France this month, sent the following email this afternoon from Paris which he asked us to share with the Edge community. And the community is responding—we are pleased to include a Reality Club discussion with contributions from: Scott Atran, Daniel L. Everett, Dan Sperber, James J. O'Donnell, Lawrence B. Brilliant, Lisa Randall, Lee Smolin, John Tooby, Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran. More to come....

JB

IAN MCEWAN, the award-winning British novelist, is the author of The Child in Time (winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, 1987), Amsterdam (winner of the Booker Prize, 1998), Atonement, Sweet Tooth, and The Children Act. He lives in London. Ian McEwan's Edge Bio Page.

The death cult chose its city well—Paris, secular capital of the world, as hospitable, diverse and charming a metropolis as was ever devised. And the death cult chose its targets in the city with ghoulish, self-damning accuracy—everything they loathed stood plainly before them on a happy Friday evening: men and women in easy association, wine, free-thinking, laughter, tolerance, music—wild and satirical rock and blues. The cultists came armed with savage nihilism and a hatred that lies beyond our understanding. Their protective armour was the suicide belt, their idea of the ultimate hiding place was the virtuous after-life, where the police cannot go. (The jihadist paradise is turning out to be one of humanity’s worst ever ideas; slash and burn in this life, eternal rest among kitsch in the next).