Prisoners of History: What Monuments to the Second World War Tell Us About Our History and Ourselves

Prisoners of History: What Monuments to the Second World War Tell Us About Our History and Ourselves

When World War Two ended, its monuments were built to tell the story. Across the world countries reckoned with the impact of the war and what was to be enshrined in national memory. Today, many of these memorials remain the most visited sites in the world. But what happens when values change, and what has been set in stone does not? From Berlin to Moscow, Seoul to Hiroshima, the Philippines to Israel, Prisoners of History gives a bold new account of the way the world reacted in the wake of World War Two. Amongst many questions, the book asks: Why is Russia still building victory monuments at a prolific rate for a war now seventy years over? Why, despite loathing his legacy, does the town of Mussolini’s final resting place still honour his tomb like a shrine? Why does a bronze statue in Seoul of a young girl with a bird on her shoulder cause such controversy? How has Japan created a world-famous monument to peace whilst taking such offence at China’s memorial to the Nanjing Massacre? Challenging known wisdom, Keith Lowe offers a powerful and perspective-changing work on the faults in national memory, and how monuments built to commemorate the past, can hold us hostage to bad history.

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Keith Lowe – William Collins