The Memory Monster

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE 2022
**A HISTORY TODAY BEST HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022

'A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present' The New York Times**

'Excels in its readiness to court controversy without surrendering nuance, and in place of moralising it offers questioning that's as necessary as it is unsettling.' Observer

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the unnamed narrator of The Memory Monster recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination, guiding tours through the death camps. The job becomes a mission, and then a dangerous obsession.

With great perspicuity and the bitterest black humour, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honour the suffering of our forebears without becoming consumed by it?

Dettagli