AustLit

'Let’s​ imagine that after this life, or perhaps before it, perhaps as a step in an endless transmigration of souls, we arrive by ship in a new land. Our memories of a previous existence are washed away. A beneficent but impersonal bureaucracy assigns us names and ages – the ages are apparently chosen by guesswork on the basis of how old we look – and arranges for us to learn Spanish, the language spoken in this new life. The state then pays us a resettlement allowance and leaves us to our own devices in a country that has cars, hospitals and law courts but little in the way of heavy industry, policing or politics. The landscape and the language suggest we’re in a temperate part of Latin America: Argentina or Uruguay, perhaps. But this is a country without a past, a colony or a province without a metropole or a concept of race or ethnicity. People go placidly about their business, sometimes engaging in philosophical debate. ‘There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now.’ What would our lives be like under these conditions?' (Introduction)