The Memory Monster

By Yishai Sarid and Yardenne Greenspan

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE 2022
A HISTORY TODAY BEST HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022

'A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present' The New York Times

'Excels in its readiness to court controversy without surrendering nuance, and in place of moralising it offers questioning that's as necessary as it is unsettling.' Observer

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the unnamed narrator of The Memory Monster recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination, guiding tours through the death camps. The job becomes a mission, and then a dangerous obsession.

With great perspicuity and the bitterest black humour, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honour the suffering of our forebears without becoming consumed by it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Release date: Jan 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781782839057

Yishai Sarid

Yishai Sarid was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1965. He is the son of senior politician and journalist Yossi Sarid. Between 1974-1977, he lived with his family in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanon border. Sarid was recruited to Israeli Army at 1983 and served for 5 years. During his service, he finished the IDF’s officers school and served as an intelligence officer. He studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During 1994-1997, he worked for the Government as an Assistant District Attorney in Tel-Aviv, prosecuting criminal cases. Sarid has a Public Administration Master's Degree (MPA) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1999). Nowadays he is an active lawyer and arbitrator, practicing mainly civil and administrative law. His Law office is located in Tel-Aviv. Alongside his legal career, Sarid writes literature, and so far he has published five novels. Sarid is married to Dr. Racheli Sion-Sarid, a critical care pediatrician, and they have three children.

Reviews for The Memory Monster

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The narrator of this short novel is a "Holocaust Guide," a "Poland Extermination Camp Expert." He primarily lives in Poland (his wife and child are in Israel), and guides groups and individuals (mostly Israeli school groups "so they will never forget" and visiting dignitaries) to the various death camps, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.The novel is in the form of a letter to the head of Yad Vashem, purportedly a report by the narrator to explain what happened to him personally as he faced the memory and the reality of the atrocities. What the book documents is an account of the unraveling of an individual.This was a dark book, set in the present day, but with the evils of the Holocaust lurking all around. How can we ever make sense of those events? Yet, how can we live with the memories of such evils?Recommended.4 stars

[whisper1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Harrowing, exceedingly detailed and beyond sad, this is a story of a Ph.D. man who was taken under the wing of the Dean of the History Department of a college, soon the narrator becomes a member of Yad Yashem, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.The man becomes a leading expert of the Nazi methods of extermination. As his studies progress in the nightmare that was Treblinka, Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and some of the lessor known of the approximately 1,000 concentration camps throughout Poland, Germany and other countries as the Germans needed land and choose to move and more eastward.As he gains extensive knowledge, he is offered the task of leading groups for one week as he takes the people further and further into the madness of Hitler and his country, now gone to sheer hell. He becomes more and more obsessed, describing the minute details that most do not want to learn. He knows all the placement of the guards, their rank, the tragic Jews, and others deemed unnecessary, and he proceeds to clearly, in a calm voice the system of killing, the chemicals used to kill.On his first trips with high school children, he is reported as aloof, cold and a fact-finding machine. As he progresses to lead more and more into the sheer madness, he becomes more animated and he is now shouting out the statistics, the horror, the dismemberment, the taking of the fillings of the Jews, the cutting of the hair, and then the walking to the death while music is played.Leaving his wife and family at home in Israel, he now does not have other guides with him. Tour groups are sent to him. As he watches the expressions on the faces of those whom he guides, he becomes more or less animated based on what he feels like telling them.There is a slow winding into madness as he reaches the point of no return, and the characters are in a play, a never ending play of insanity.Chilling, well written and beyond sad!