Paperback, 189 pages
Published April 11, 2002 by Granta Books.
autobiographical stuff would've been better left out, the historical material, lengthy quotations from other works aside are very inert, ideas are suggested but never engaged with or explored, read King Leopold's Ghost instead
Colonialism has always meant genocidal extinction, and with Kendi-esque clarity Lindqvist charts the shifting justifications and revelations swept aside or welcomed in "civilized" society grappling with these terrors and all too normal evils. The elements of the author's own travelogue and of Conrad's literary and experiential background for "Heart of Darkness" are minor counterpoints to a forceful documentation of societal guilt.
A masterful blend of a travel journal, a notepad by the bedside in which one records his or her dreams, a political essay, a memoir of passing childhood, a literary review and many other art forms. Lindqvist presents the raise of racism in Europe as a scientific movement. He then shifts his gaze to the extermination of the black man, and in doing so, he shows us how utterly stupid, heartless and brutal the white man has been in the last 200 years.
