Amnesia Road Landscape, violence and memory

Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards – Australian History Prize. 'At both ends of the world, I have found confusion and profound disagreement about how to read the story of the past, about who should write or speak it, and what parts of it should be written or spoken about at all.' Amnesia Road is a compelling literary examination of historic violence in rural areas of Australia and Spain. It is also an unashamed celebration of the beautiful landscapes where this violence has been carried out. Travelling and writing across two locations—the seldom-visited mulga plains of south-west Queensland and the backroads of rural Andalusia—award-winning Australian Hispanist Luke Stegemann uncovers neglected history and its many neglected victims, and asks what place such forgotten people have in contemporary debates around history, nationality, guilt, and identity.

Luke Stegemann is an Hispanist and cultural historian based in rural south-east Queensland. He has held senior positions in media, publishing and higher education in Australia, Europe and Asia. Luke has written on art, politics and history for a wide range of Australian and Spanish publications, and is the author of The Beautiful Obscure (2017). In 2018 he received the Malaspina Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of cultural relations between Australia and Spain.