The Stranger: Crime and Prejudice in Australia by Tom Austen

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Previous owner has signed inside page, now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker.

On a summer's day in 1903, eight European migrants set out on a picnic in the hills east of Perth. Wine flowed, a shot was heard, and in a bizarre turn of events six of them, including three women, were sentenced to hang just a few weeks later.

Disturbing social divisions erupted as ugly attitudes towards migrants were revealed.

Nearly half a century later, amid the great postwar boom in European migration to Australia, the same misunderstanding, misguided patriotism and bigotry recurred with the strange case of Czechoslovak migrant Karol Tapci.

Tom Austen's minutely researched book is a true-crime thriller and anatomy of community bias.