A Tiny Excerpt from Nobody's Home

I’m working on Dubravka Ugresic’s new book of essays, Nobody’s Home, which won’t be out until a year from now (I know, it’s a long time), and I wanted to share this tiny little excerpt since I just ran across it:

Things would be simpler if the people who did all this were willing to agree that they had been killing for the sake of killing, destroying for the sake of destroying, torching for the sake of torching. That, of course, will not happen. History and culture are the most reliable ‘banks’ for laundering a dirty conscience. History and culture are part and parcel of what is known as the national cultural identity, though the national and the identity are only figments of the collective imagination. The collective, however, is to be believed. An individual killer would never be able to say: “I killed defending William Shakespeare because he is part of my cultural heritage.” A collective, on the other hand, can. This is seen, indeed, as its right.