How, in the twenty-first century, can we do commemoration better? In particular, how can commemoration contribute to post-war reconciliation and reconstruction? In this book, a global roster of distinguished writers, artists, musicians, religious leaders, military veterans and scholars debate these questions and ponder the future of commemoration. They include the world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz, the award-winning novelists Aminatta Forna and Rachel Seiffert, and the human rights lawyer and Gifford Baillie Prize-winner Philippe Sands. Polemics and reflections together with poetry and creative prose movingly illuminate a subject that speaks to our common humanity.

CONTENTS: Catherine Gilbert/Kate McLoughlin/Niall Munro: Introduction: The Call to Remembrance - Part I: Textual Commemoration - Catherine Gilbert: Introduction: Words Fail Us - Jenny Lewis: Now as Then -Aminatta Forna with Elleke Boehmer: Memoir and Memory - Philippe Sands: The Act of Looking Back - Rachel Seiffert: Daring to Remember - Shea Esterling, Michael John-Hopkins and Christopher Harding: Reflections on International Justice as a Commemorative Process - Daniel O'Gorman: Bearing Witness, Becoming Human: Cultural Memory, «Post-Truth» and the Digital - Jane Potter with Kate McLoughlin: Encountering Commemoration - Robert Eaglestone: My History, Our History - Lyndsey Stonebridge: Sacred Memory/Prosaic History: Rivesaltes Memorial Camp - Harvey Whitehouse: Commemoration, Collective Loss and Social Cohesion - Cherilyn Elston: Open Wounds: Commemorating the Colombian Conflict - Frank Ledwidge: What Is It All About? - Alex Donnelly:Lacrimae Rerum: Building a Bridge between Literary and Monumental Commemoration - Adnan al-Sayegh:Uruk's Anthem(Extracts) - Part II: Monumental Commemoration - Niall Munro: Introduction: More than Stone - Finding Ourselves in Our Monuments - Daniel Libeskind: Articulating History: Architecture and Memory - The Very Reverend John Witcombe: From Brokenness to Reconciliation - Cornelia Kulawik with Kate McLoughlin: Reconciliation and a Responsibility to the Past - Gabriel Moshenska: Memorials that Lurk and Pounce - Sue Zatland: Three Poems - Mark Johnston with Alex Donnelly: Community through Creativity: Empowering Veteran Artists - Emma Login: The Paradoxes of Commemoration - Silke Arnold-de Simine with Catherine Gilbert: Commemoration and the Limits of Empathy - Mariah Whelan: Four Poems - Jeremy Treglown: The Knowledge - Charles Gurrey with Niall Munro: A Concretisation of Meaning: Making Memorials - Marita Sturken with Niall Munro: When Is the Focus on Memory Just Too Much? The Challenges of Commemoration and Cultural Memory - Susie Campbell: Memoration - Justine Shaw: The Scent of Commemoration - Johana Wyss: Stones Do Not Forget: Forgetting and Being Forgotten in Czech Silesia - Tony Horwitz: Lose the Dudes, Keep the Horses: On Civil War Monuments in the United States - Part III: Aural Commemoration - Kate McLoughlin: Introduction: Music, Voices, Absence, Silence - Juliana M. Pistorius: Mourning and Music - Jonathan Dove with Kate Kennedy: Music and Memory - Peter Grant: Classical to Dub-Reggae: The First World War and Musical Memory - Dunya Mikhail: Bag of Bones - Rita Phillips: Interviewing as a Commemorative Practice - Annabel Williams: Hearing the Dead - Paul Whitty: Listening to the Past, Sound - Susie Campbell: Hush - John Dunston: Returning from Europe, Reflections on Post-War Commemoration - Patrick Toland: From «Daniel» - Lydia Wilson: Remembering the Lebanese Civil War - Noreen Masud: Monumental Silences - Férdia J. Stone-Davis: Re-valuing Silence - Maggie Ross: The Costliness of Commemoration - Susie Campbell: Traces.