Avan Judd Stallard Books

For years Nick Harris has been drifting, until the day he finds himself surrounded by red dirt and razor wire, staring at brownskinned men inside a detention centre. He's no crusader, no bleeding-heart. It's just a job. The strange thing is, the longer Nick looks, the more normal the detainees seem, and the crazier everything around them- the desert that is its own prison, the staff filled with resentment and disdain, the system that represents both salvation and damnation. Nick is a future seeker-just like his 'clients'. Only, he comes to realise they're not just clients. They have personalities and share conversations, just like him. They joke and steal and cry and conspire. They are bad men, good men, dumb men, smart men-just men. Like him.

This book is a new history of an ancient geography. It reassesses the evidence for why Europeans believed a massive southern continent existed, and why they advocated for its discovery. When ships were equal to ambitions, explorers set out to find and claim Terra Australis. Antipodes charts these voyages?voyages both through the imagination and across the High Seas?in pursuit of the mythical Terra Australis. In doing so, the question is asked: how could so many fail to see the realities they encountered? And how is it a mythical land held the gaze of an era famed for breaking free the shackles of superstition? That Terra Australis did not exist didn?t stop explorers pursuing the continent, unwilling to abandon the promise of such a rich and magnificent land till it was stripped of every ounce of value it had ever promised. In the process, the southern continent?an imaginary land?became one of the shaping forces of early modern history. Includes 48 pages of b & w and colour images.