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.

Over twenty years ago, Sven Lindqvist, one of the great pioneers of a new kind of experiential history writing, set out across Central Africa. Obsessed with a single line from Conrad's The Heart of Darkness - Kurtz's injunction to 'Exterminate All the Brutes' - he braided an account of his experiences with a profound historical investigation, revealing to the reader with immediacy and cauterizing force precisely what Europe's imperial powers had exacted on Africa's peoples over the course of the preceding two centuries. Shocking, humane, crackling with imaginative energies and moral purpose, Exterminate All the Brutes stands as an impassioned, timeless classic. It is essential reading for anybody ready to come to terms with the brutal, racist history on which Europe built its wealth.

'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print. As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by Hesse's work, Lindqvist lived in China for two years, learning classical calligraphy from a master teacher. There he was drawn deeper into the idea of a life of artistic perfectionism and retreat from the world. But when he left China for India and then Afghanistan, and saw the grotesque effects of poverty and extreme inequality, Lindqvist suffered a crisis of confidence and started to question his ideas about complete immersion in art at the expense of a proper engagement with life. The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu takes us on a fascinating journey through a young man's moral awakening and his grappling with profound questions of aesthetics. It contains the bracing moral anger, and poetic, intensely atmospheric travel writing Lindqvist's readers have come to love.

"Exterminate All the Brutes" 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, Sven Lindqvist 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, the author exposes the roots of genocide in Africa via his own journey through the Saharan desert. As Lindqvist shows, fantasies not merely of white superiority but of actual extermination—"cleansing" the earth of the so-called lesser races—deeply informed European colonialism and racist ideology that ultimately culminated in Europe’s own Holocaust. Chosen as one of the Best Books of 1998 by the New Internationalist, which called it "a beautifully written integration of criticism, cultural history, and travel writing, underpinned by a passion for social justice," "Exterminate All the Brutes" is a powerful reckoning with the past and an indispensable contribution to the literature of colonial Africa and European genocide.

Sven Lindqvist is one of our most original writers on race, colonialism, and genocide, and his signature approach--uniting travelogues with powerful acts of historical excavation--renders his books devastating and unforgettable.
Now, for the first time, Lindqvist's most beloved works are available in one beautiful and affordable volume with a new introduction by Adam Hochschild. "The Dead Do Not Die" includes the full unabridged text of ""Exterminate All the Brutes,"" called "a book of stunning range and near genius" by David Levering Lewis. In this work, 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 thus exposing the roots of genocide via his own journey through the Saharan desert.
The full text of "Terra Nullius" is also included, for which Lindqvist traveled 7,000 miles through Australia in search of the lands the British had claimed as their own because it was inhabited by "lower races," the native Aborigines--nearly nine-tenths of whom were annihilated by whites. The shocking story of how "no man's land" became the province of the white man was called "the most original work on Australia and its treatment of Aboriginals I have ever read . . . marvelous" by Phillip Knightley, author of "Australia."

On 1 November 1911, Lieutenant Cavarotti leaned out of the cockpit of his delicate aircraft and, holding a Haasen hand grenade, began one of the most devastating military tactics of the twentieth century: aerial bombing. This is but one of many points of entry Lindqvist presents in this innovative history. Structuring the book in a way that re-enacts the disruptions of history caused by the advent of the bomb, Lindqvist offers his readers a series of ways into and paths through this re-examination of a century of war. He turns his fresh, inquisitive eye and tireless moral sense on the fascinating histories behind the development of air power, bombs and the laws of war and international justice, demonstrating how the practices of two world wars were born of colonial warfare.

This volume brings Dig Where You Stand, Sven Lindqvist's classic text on history, power and politics, to English-speaking audiences for the first time. First published in 1978, Dig Where You Stand is a rallying cry for workers to become researchers, to follow the money, take on the role as experts on their job, and "dig" out its hidden histories in order to take a vital step towards social and economic transformation. A how-to guide that inspired an entire movement, it makes the case that everyone – not just academics – can learn how to critically and rigorously explore history, especially their own history, and in doing so find a blueprint for how to transform society for the better. In a world where the balance of power is overwhelmingly stacked against the working-class, Dig Where You Stand's manifesto for the empowerment of workers through self-education, historical research and political solidarity is as important and relevant today as it was in 1978.

A DARING LITERARY AND HISTORICAL LOOK AT THE IDEOLOGIES OF WAR AND VIOLENCE, BY THE AUTHOR OF "EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES" On November 1, 1911, over the North African oasis Tagiura, Lieutenant Giulio Cavotti leaned out of the cockpit of his primitive aircraft and dropped a Haasen hand grenade. Thus began one of the most devastating military tactics of the twentieth century: aerial bombing. With this point of entry, Sven Lindqvist, the author of the highly acclaimed "Exterminate All the Brutes, " presents a cleverly constructed and innovative history. Now available in paperback, A History of Bombing tells the fascinating stories behind the development of air power, bombs, and the laws of war and international justice, demonstrating how the practices of the two world wars were born from colonial warfare.

""At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.""--Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man"
"Terra nullius"--no man's land--was the legal fiction employed to justify the white invasion of Australia. Aboriginal lands were declared "terra nullius" because, it was claimed, they were inhabited by people who would soon die out--and who could be helped on the way to extinction if they lingered.
Author of the acclaimed ""Exterminate All the Brutes"" and "A History of Bombing," Sven Lindqvist is one of the most innovative writers and historians at work today. He brings his original sensibility to bear as he travels 12,000 kilometers through so-called no man's land in search of places where belief in the rights of the white man and the inevitable extinction of the "lower races" were put into practice. The world the Aborigines had known for centuries ended as young boys were kidnapped to dive for pearls, then whipped and abandoned when the bends ruined them for work; "half-caste" children were taken from their mothers; and natives were put in neck irons and sent to internment camps under false diagnoses of STDs.
Mining history, popular fiction, anthropology, and his own travels, Lindqvist brilliantly weaves together an illuminating and disturbing history of how "no man's land" became the province of the white man.