Monumenta

Reviews / Votes

Absurdist and humane, this is a laser-sharp work of concentrated brilliance. Encompassing family and history, politics and love, Monumenta is surprising, original and so assured -- WENDY ERSKINE A deeply political debut novel, fizzing with ideas, examines the difficulties of memorialising the past in a region riven by conflict * * Observer * * Beneath the whimsy lurk serious issues about statues, official histories and which parts of our past we seek to paper over * * Financial Times * * Surreal, quirky, playful and serious . . . This slip of a book takes us to contemporary Belgrade and explores, with imagination and dark humour, how painful pasts are dealt with personally and publicly, asking questions about the roles of memorialisation, memory, erasure, transformation, grief and healing -- PRISCILLA MORRIS Every image is charged with meaning; every word bears the weight of history. Hallucinatory, haunting . . . Lara Haworth is an important new voice in European literature -- CLARE POLLARD A gem of genuine absurdism, and one that moves so unpredictably along its own structure, touching on - banging on, and knocking down - the fundamentals of buildings and trauma, family and love, reason and history, in a stunning, witty kick of literary brilliance -- HOLLY PESTER The satire in Monumenta is loaded without ever feeling overegged because there is so much substance here, so many layers of characterisation and theme running through such a short book that are expressed in some exquisite writing * * New European * * A haunting read about all manner of love and loss, remembering and forgetting. I could not put it down -- KIRSTY WARK Monumenta is . . . a very apt book, it fits right here, meaning now and I read it in one sitting. This is a party I'm glad I was invited to -- EILEEN MYLES Full of fresh and witty descriptions, featuring incisively drawn characters, about personal and political memory, and how each wrestles with the other. About how the past nourishes yet also throttles the present. About the impossibility of escape from either one's history or one's destiny -- TIM PEARS