Leviathan: The Unauthorized Biography of Sydney by John Birmingham
An electrifying, epic history of the city of Sydney as you have never seen her before.
To peer deeply into this ghost city, the one lying beneath the surface, is to understand that Sydney has a soul and that it is a very dark place indeed.'Beneath the shining harbour, amid the towers of global greed and deep inside the bad-drugs madness of the suburban wastelands, lies Sydney's shadow history. Terrifying tsunamis, corpse-robbing morgue staff, killer cops, neo-Nazis, power junkies and bumbling SWOS teams electrify this epic tale of a city with a cold vacuum for a moral core.Birmingham drills beneath the cover story of a successful multicultural metropolis and melts the boundaries between past and present to reveal a ghost city beneath the surface of concrete and glass. In Birmingham's alternative history of Sydney, the yawning chasm between the megarich and the lumpen masses is as evident in the insane wealth of the new elites as it was in the head-spinning rapacity of the NSW Rum Corps. This is a city shattered by the nexus between government, big money and the underworld, where the glittering prizes go to the strong, not the just.Combining intensive research with the pace of a techno-thriller, John Birmingham creates a rich portrait of a city too dazzled by its own gorgeous reflection to caremuch for what lies at its dark, corrupted heart. Illuminated by wild flashes of black humour, violent, ghoulish and utterly compelling, Leviathan is history for the Tarantino generation.
I first saw Leviathan on my son Paul's bookshelf way back in 2015. I had read After America, Weapons of Choice, Designated Targets and Final Impact and was a big fan of John Birmingham, so I soon purchased my own copy of Leviathan (way back in 2016) and had it in the queue. Daunted by the sheer size of book (563 pages) and its serious non-fiction topic, it was only in 2024 that I finally bit the bullet and completed my read.
Birmingham, who is an Australian author, spent four years researching the history of Sydney for Leviathan which won Australia's National Prize For Non-Fiction in 2002. And it is indeed a case of Wow!
He takes aim at the city's rotten heart and doesn't miss. From the colonial thuggery of the Rum Corps to the bent coppers exposed by the Woods Royal Commission it seems that nothing has changed in two centuries. What a read and what a contrast to Melbourne, now much the same size as Sydney and vying with that city for 'top dog' status. While Melbourne has its share of issues, it is relatively genteel compared to Sydney. Now I can understand why.
Alas, I haven't read He died with a falafal in his hand yet but one day...!
Birmingham, who is an Australian author, spent four years researching the history of Sydney for Leviathan which won Australia's National Prize For Non-Fiction in 2002. And it is indeed a case of Wow!
He takes aim at the city's rotten heart and doesn't miss. From the colonial thuggery of the Rum Corps to the bent coppers exposed by the Woods Royal Commission it seems that nothing has changed in two centuries. What a read and what a contrast to Melbourne, now much the same size as Sydney and vying with that city for 'top dog' status. While Melbourne has its share of issues, it is relatively genteel compared to Sydney. Now I can understand why.
Alas, I haven't read He died with a falafal in his hand yet but one day...!
