Prisoners of History

What happens when our values change, but what we have 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.