Now part of the eponymous HBO docuseries written and directed by
Raoul Peck, Exterminate All the Brutes is a brilliant
intellectual history of Europe’s genocidal colonization of
Africa—and the terrible myths and lies that it spawned
“A book of
stunning range and near genius. . . . The catastrophic consequences
of European imperialism are made palpable in the personal progress of
the author, a late-twentieth-century pilgrim in Africa. Lindqvist’s
astonishing connections across time and cultures, combined with a
marvelous economy of prose, leave the reader appalled, reflective,
and grateful.” —David Levering Lewis
Exterminate All
the Brutes, Sven Lindqvist’s widely acclaimed masterpiece, is a
searching examination of Europe’s dark history in Africa and the
origins of genocide. Using Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as his
point of departure, the award-winning Swedish author takes us on a
haunting tour through the colonial past, interwoven with a modern-day
travelogue. Retracing the steps of European explorers, missionaries,
politicians, and historians in Africa from the late eighteenth
century onward, Exterminate All the Brutes exposes the roots
of genocide in Africa through Lindqvist’s own journey through the
Saharan desert. As he shows, fantasies not merely of white
superiority but of actual extermination—“cleansing” the earth
of the so-called lesser races—deeply informed the colonialism and
racist ideology that ultimately culminated in Europe’s own
Holocaust.
Conquerors’
stories are the ones that inform the self-mythology of the
West—whereas the lives and stories of those displaced, enslaved, or
killed are too often ignored and forgotten. Exterminate All the
Brutes forces a crucial reckoning with a past that still echoes
in our collective psyche—a reckoning that compels us to acknowledge
the exploitation and brutality at the heart of our modern, globalized
society. As Adam Hochschild has written, “Lindqvist’s work leaves
you changed.”