How countries manipulate historical memory in the aftermath of war or repression is one of the most urgent issues facing the world today, for decisions taken by those in power cast long shadows into the future.
Combining gripping storytelling with sharp observation, Erna Paris takes the reader on a remarkable journey through four continents to explore how nations reinvent themselves after cataclysmic events such as the Holocaust, Hiroshima or genocidal war. She seeks out politicians and power-brokers as well as the men and women dealing with the aftermath of repression.
On a tense, frightening ride in the snow-covered mountains of Bosnia, or faced by the time-warped silence of the Yakusuni shrine in downtown Tokyo, she asks the questions: Who gets to decide what actually happened yesterday, then to propagate the tale? How do people live with the consequences? And why is it that many countries cannot lay the past to rest?
Her journey takes her to the United States, with its long-buried memory of slavery; to South Africa, to sit in on a Truth and Reconciliation hearing to heal the divisions of apartheid; to Japan to probe the unresolved struggle for truth in Second World War history; to France still wrestling with its wartime legacy of collaboration; to Germany where ferocious "memory battles" continue to swirl around the Holocaust; and to the former Yugoslavia where she exposes a cynical shaping of historical memory, and the way the international community responded to the lethal outcome.
Paris takes us directly to the places of reckoning. Her analysis is as insightful as it is poignant. She finds hope in the way ordinary people grapple with the defining events of their lives, and in the changing face of international justice. And finally she makes us question where we stand as individuals in relation to our own collective histories. Evocatively written, 'Long Shadows' illuminates the modern world.
