Two classic works of colonial history—and personal evocations of
places with difficult pasts—from the internationally acclaimed
writer
“A brilliant
and original writer.” —Geoff Dyer
One of our most
original writers on race, colonialism, and genocide, Sven Lindqvist
has a signature approach—uniting travelogues with powerful acts of
historical excavation and truth-telling—that makes his books as
unforgettable as they are devastating. Here two of his most important
works are brought together for the first time in a single volume,
with a new introduction by Adam Hochschild.
In “Exterminate
All the Brutes”, Lindqvist uses Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness as a point of departure for a haunting tour through the
colonial past, retracing the steps of Europeans in Africa from the
late eighteenth century onward and using his own experience of the
Saharan desert to expose the roots of genocide. In Terra Nullius,
Lindqvist traveled 7,000 miles to explore the shocking story of how
Australia’s “no man’s land” became the province of the white
man. This journey through the lands the British claimed as their own
because they were inhabited by “lower races,” the native
Aborigines—nearly nine-tenths of whom were annihilated by whites—is
one of Lindqvist’s most powerful works.
