Sven Lindqvist: Exterminate all the brutes

A most interesting unusual and in some ways, puzzling book. Suppose it could best very described as an historical, socio-politico-cultural meditation on..well as whole range of areas and topics.

The start, and many sections read as a travel journal..the author in Saharan Africa wonderfully evoking the extraordinariness of this part of the world so far removed in every sense from the Western experience. I suppose this is to try to suggest this to us so that we can perhaps begin to understand the impact of a world infinitely far removed from the Western experience..and which when dealing with colonial history and experiences might suggest the sort of effect it had on the builders of the Empires.

The title is from Conrad's Heart of Darkness which is the thread that holds the book together. He shows by the end how perhaps what is depicted in the book is not just a wholly imaginative artistic creation but rather a reflection and a foreshadowing of European actions and experiences. The historical events he references-Stanley and his expeditions, the Belgian Congo and many other less well-known events and situations all in a way led to this.

Remarkable book...and characteristically a Granta publication.