Terra Nullius

A Journey Through No One's Land

Sven Lindqvist

Translated by Sarah Death

hardcover

$24.95

“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.

Sven Lindqvist has published thirty books, including The Skull Measurer’s Mistake and A History of Bombing (both available from The New Press). He holds a PhD in the history of literature from Stockholm University, an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, and an honorary professorship from the Swedish government. He lives in Stockholm. Sarah Death has translated Sven Lindqvist’s Bench Press and works by various other Swedish authors. She won the George Bernard Shaw Prize for translation from the Swedish in 2003 and 2006.