"Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide

Now part of the eponymous HBO docuseries written and directed by Raoul Peck, Exterminate All the Brutes is a brilliant intellectual history of Europes genocidal colonization of Africaand 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. Lindqvists 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 Lindqvists widely acclaimed masterpiece, is a searching examination of Europes dark history in Africa and the origins of genocide. Using Joseph Conrads 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 Lindqvists own journey through the Saharan desert. As he shows, fantasies not merely of white superiority but of actual exterminationcleansing the earth of the so-called lesser racesdeeply informed the colonialism and racist ideology that ultimately culminated in Europes own Holocaust. Conquerors stories are the ones that inform the self-mythology of the Westwhereas 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 psychea reckoning that compels us to acknowledge the exploitation and brutality at the heart of our modern, globalized society. As Adam Hochschild has written, Lindqvists work leaves you changed.