March 2025 Book of the Month - Emma recommends... Monumenta - Lara Howarth

Emma recommends... Deeply political, satirically funny, and occasionally surreal, this dazzlingly brilliant debut is jammed with ideas and packs a much heftier punch than its slim stature suggests. Exploring the act of remembering (personally and nationally) as well as the multifarious difficulties and absurdities of memorializing the past, this book is an extraordinary, unusual, and entirely worthwhile read. And don't just take my word for it - shortlisted for the 2024 Nero Book Awards!

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Olga Pavic's house has been requisitioned. The council will bulldoze it. Her home will become a monument to a massacre. But Olga cannot ascertain which massacre. Three different architects visit, each with a proposal to construct a different monument, to memorialise a different horror.

Within an atmosphere of razor-sharp political surreality, Lara Haworth spins a tender, magical story of familial love and loss. Via a panoply of perspectives Monumenta compellingly and playfully explores remembrance and how tragedy can be the catalyst for remarkable transformation.