Monster

It all starts as a love story. The unnamed first-person narrator adores everything historical, the gentle waves of the complete. However, to make a living in academia, he takes a pragmatic decision and specialises in the Shoah. Now he finds himself working as a tour guide for groups of Israeli schoolchildren in memorial centres on the Polish sites of Nazi concentration camps. Here he gives lectures about the murderers, meets eyewitnesses and allows none of the horrors of the past to be forgotten. At the same time, he attempts to help his young son in Israel find his way in a complex world. However, his constant confrontation with horror is not free of consequences. While he makes daily contributions to the culture of remembrance, history inscribes itself into his whole being. His academic detachment crumbles and he increasingly loses control of his thoughts as his research turns into an obsession. In his novel MONSTER (“The Memory Monster”), Yishai Sarid lays bare the open wound of memory while simultaneously taking dead aim at the present and a brutal world that is at risk of losing its moral compass. The Israeli director Itay Tiran, recently shortlisted by the Berlin Theatertreffen for ONKEL WANJA (“Uncle Vanya”), produces the German language premiere of his haunting text as a monologue.