Book Review: ‘Humans: A Monstrous History’ by Surekha Davies

Book Title: Humans: A Monstrous History
Author: Surekha Davies
Publisher: Westland Non-Fiction
Number of Pages: 344
ISBN: 9379858175
Date Published: Aug. 27, 2026

Book Review

“Humans: A Monstrous History“, written by historian Dr. Surekha Davies and published in 2025 and 2026, offers a fascinating look at how humanity has defined itself over the last four thousand years.

Instead of focusing on fictional beasts under the bed, Davies explores the concept of “monster-making” or “monstrification”. This is the process where societies label people, beliefs, or behaviours that do not fit into neat, everyday boxes as strange, abnormal, or “monstrous”.

By studying who has been called a monster throughout history, the book shows that the lines we draw around what makes someone “normal” are actually created by human cultures rather than nature.

The book takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through different cultural beliefs about our bodies and our connection to the environment. It looks at how many Indigenous cultures traditionally viewed humans as overlapping and connected with nature, such as in stories of shape-shifters who could share their souls with animals like jaguars.

It then contrasts this with the historical European focus on drawing a hard line between humans and animals. Davies guides us through historical cases, like the famous hairy Gonsalvus family in the sixteenth century who were treated as courtly curiosities, and shows how early scientists like Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin struggled to classify where the animal world ends and humanity begins.

A major focus of the book is how monster-making has been weaponised by those in power to control and exclude others. Davies connects these ideas directly to the dark histories of racism, colonialism, and sexism.

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The text shows how legal systems like “black codes” were written to turn human beings into property, how older independent women were hunted down as witches, and how people with physical differences were displayed for money in “freak shows”.

It even brings these issues into the modern era, discussing how gender-policing rules in sports still penalise and humiliate athletes who do not fit narrow, stereotypical ideas of what a woman should look like.

In the final chapters, the book looks toward our future and our relationship with technology. Davies discusses how modern machines and artificial intelligence (AI) risk dehumanising us by treating human labour as redundant and turning our creative lives into simple data to be sold.

The author warns that our current political climate is shrinking what it means to be human through anti-LGBTQIA+ laws and the loss of reproductive rights. Ultimately, the book ends on a hopeful note, proposing a concept called “monstrofuturism”.

This is the idea that instead of fearing or locking away those who do not fit into boxes, we should build a safer and kinder world that celebrates our differences.

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