![]() ![]() The story is difficult and raw but recognizable. And one of the colonizers, Johnny Star, defects from his fellow soldiers to join the conquered people in violent resistance. A young woman, Esperance, struggles to hold together her crumbling community. A desperate runaway, Jacky, is pursued through the desert by soldiers and a particularly nasty commander named Rohan. A cruel religious leader, Sister Bagra, abuses children. ![]() Hunger, fear, and desperation exist at the precariously free fringes of a colonial government that otherwise forces native persons into slave-like working conditions and assimilation by education. Strangers invade to decimate Indigenous people and the land. This is a story about imperial domination. Set in the arid Australian outback, the first hundred pages depict a gripping if distinctly this-worldly conflict that resembles brutal expropriation as it exists and has existed in any number of places. It’s not a question I can address without giving away the twist. Indeed, what is so fascinating about this book is the open question of whether this particular revelation changes everything about the story or changes nothing at all. A challenge because describing this force demands spoiling a revelation that punctuates the story some one hundred pages in. Coleman delivers a driving narrative of profound force. Terra Nullius is as much a gift to readers as a challenge to reviewers. ![]()
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