Useless Afghans and clever whites: sustaining the myths of "white superiority" in early-twentieth-century Australian crime fiction

This article explores how early-twentieth-century Australian crime fiction responded to the perceived economic and racial threat of the "Afghan" cameleers by acting as a literature of fantasy fulfillment wherein myths of white superiority and nation building were sustained through the cameleers' portrayal as both "deviant and absent," most notably manifesting in the figure of the "fake Afghan."