Monumenta [Hardcover]

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST NEW DEBUT

'This is a party I'm glad I was invited to' EILEEN MYLES
'Fizzing with ideas' OBSERVER

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Isn't every family home a monument? The provocative debut novel from the award-winning author.


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.

Lara Haworthis a writer, filmmaker and a political researcher, specialising in the UK's move to become carbon zero by 2050. Having turned an extract fromMonumentainto a short story, she won a Bridport prize for it in October 2022. In the same year she won a prize for her poem 'The Thames Barrier' in the Caf? Writers Poetry Competition, wrote and narrated a podcast,The Swimming Pool, for NTS radio and was commissioned to write a long autofiction feature,Mistakes are Pure Colour, forExtra ExtraMagazine. Her writing workshop,Letters That Will Never Be Sent, was featured in a BBC World Service documentary. Her film,All the People I Hurt With My Wedding, won the LGBT prize at the Athens International Monthly Film Festival, and her latest film,Grief is a Hungry Ghost, has premiered at festivals including Japan International, New York Tri-State and Munich New Wave.Monumentais her first novel.

larahaworth.com | @larahaworth | @lara_haworth