On August 1, 2018, in response to the outrage amongst some citizens that Coles would be phasing out the supply of single use plastic bags in NSW, Osman wrote to his 20,000 Twitter followers: “Australians are a deeply conservative, insular and fearful people with the collective delusion they are laid back and forward thinking.” The reaction was swift and ruthless. Within hours, an aggressive racist onslaught ensued, leading to fears for Osman’s personal safety, police reports, and psychiatric counselling.

When Osman’s family migrated to Sydney from Lahore in the early nineties, they began a journey typical of many Australians. His father, a highly skilled engineer, took a job driving taxis. His mother stayed home, afraid her accent wouldn’t be understood. In 2000, they moved to Port Macquarie and were the only Muslims in town. Then 9/11 happened; Tampa happened; the Cronulla riots happened; Christchurch happened. Osman grew up to be one of the nation’s most visible political commentators. His mother, Mehreen Faruqi, became Australia’s first Muslim senator.

Beginning with a reckoning after Christchurch, THE RACIST COUNTRY will chart the history of Australian racism—from colonisation through the heated conversations taking place in sport—to reveal the intolerance at play in all the corners of our culture. Equal parts memoir, history, and political commentary, Osman’s nonfiction debut, will be an urgent and essential contribution to Australia’s dialogue around race, the first from his generation. THE RACIST COUNTRY will be a long-overdue polemic—one that takes a bold, clear-eyed look at the past in order to ask the question: where do we go from here?