Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land

Description

In the critically acclaimed Desert Divers and Exterminate All the Brutes, Sven Lindqvist travelled through Africa's deserts and unearthed the cruelty of colonialism. Now he has done the same for Australia. Lindqvist travels through the south of the country, lyrically describing its landscape, flora and fauna and geology, while also telling the history of the country and revealing the shocking treatment of its Aboriginal peoples. He catalogues some truly shocking abuses, such as the rounding up of Aborigine women for transportation to the chillingly named 'Isle of the Dead' for inappropriate and often fatal syphilis treatment, and the extensive forced separation of 'half-blood' children from their families to squalid prison-like camps. Stretching from the formation of the Australian continent 600 million years ago to the 2002 hunger strikes in the Woomera detention camp, Terra Nullius leaves us with a strong sense of Australia as a piece of earth, steeped in geological and tragic human history.

Sven Lindqvist was born in 1932 in Stockholm, where he still lives. He has traveled extensively through Asia, Africa and Latin America, and is the author of over thirty books, including Exterminate all the Brutes, and his companion books Desert Divers and A History of Bombing, forthcoming from Granta in a dual-edition, Saharan Journeys.

Terra Nullius is the latest instalment in Sven Lindqvist's confrontation with the genocidal consequences of Western advancement ... Lindqvist's strength is the sheer heat of his passions and the boldness with which he attacks complacency ... The landscape, and his journeying, are brilliantly rendered by a master of worldly insight and stylistic precision ... a work of urgent necessity and a heart-warming marvel * Independent * Readers of his earlier masterpieces, A History of Bombing and Exterminate all the Brutes will know that Sven Lindqvist is a brilliant and original writer as well as a fierce polemicist. With Terra Nullius he has undertaken another devastating journey of historical exploration. -- Geoff Dyer Fascinating * Guardian *