This summer I spent a couple of days in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. It's a charming city, which gets scorched by the heat during hot summer months. In the evenings local residents and tourists fill up the centre of Yerevan, walking up and down the Cascade, an outdoor collection of modern sculptures from all over the world, donated by Gerard Cafesjian, a wealthy American benefactor with Armenian roots. You'll find visitors posing by Fernando Botero's works and snapping sculptures by Barry Flanagan, Lynn Chadwick and Jaume Plensa. In fact, even away from the Cascade, walking through many Yerevan's parks, squares and avenues, I kept bumping into monuments, commemorating Armenian and Russian writers, poets, architects and scientists. It felt as if the old town is a treasure trove of Armenian cultural heritage. I liked it very much.

Come to think of it, every city probably has a monument or two it becomes associated with. There is a Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, which transports me back to my childhood, spent reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. There is the Statue of Liberty in New York, but also a Raging Bull on the Wall Street in Manhattan. There is Motherland Calls! (Родина-мать зовёт!) in Volgograd in Russia, commemorating the battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War. There is Romulus and Remus statue in Rome depicting a she-wolf nursing two brothers. And of course, there are plenty of religious monuments of all faiths all over the world, which also speak for the local customs and traditions. Every monument - be it sombre or playful, old or new - is a cultural symbol which echoes national values.

So what kind of values come to mind when we hear about a new monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the infamous AK-47 automatic rifle, which is to be unveiled in Moscow in September 2017? The 7-metre sculpture is said to cost 35 million roubles ($538,000). Don't get me wrong - Kalashnikov was obviously an ingenious designer, but even he was tormented by his own invention. In a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before his death in 2013, Kalashnikov wrote that he was haunted by the thousands of deaths his invention was responsible for. “My spiritual pain is unbearable,” he wrote. “I keep asking the same insoluble question. If my rifle deprived people of life then can it be that I … a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?” It's not Kalashnikov that unnerves me - it's the commemoration of his gun, the weapons in general, the cult of war and, inevitably, of murder.

What kind of city or its government chooses to put up a monument which celebrates the act of killing? I imagine taking schoolchildren to see the new statue and instilling in them - what exactly? You see, I have been brought up on the cult of the Second World War, everyone in the Soviet Union was. We read books and watched films about the Great Patriotic War, the exceptional sacrifice of our grandparents; we were taught to hate fascism, to worship our heroes and to be ready to die for our motherland, should the need arise. And it so happened that later mere boys, who had been spoon-fed war stories, were sent to Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 and then returned to their mothers in zinc coffins. To add insult to the loss of grieving mothers, there was nothing remotely patriotic about that war.

And so I have been hoping all this time that the cult of war has been fading in my home country, but the opposite is true. The new statues being erected in Russia are commemorating Stalin and now Kalashnikov. I see that and I understand it, but I can't accept it. My own values have changed.

If I were asked to come up with an idea for a new monument for a city I live in, here is what I'd suggest. Recently I spent a day at a Central London hospital, which for me was an oasis of unreserved kindness. I have been incredibly well looked after even despite the long wait and the nervousness about being in a hospital. It's as if the staff were wired differently from the phlegmatic, chronically stressed Londoners one accounts on the tube every day. My nurse came to London from the Philippines.  She works 12-hour shifts four days a week and a short shift on her fifth working day. A short shift means an 8-hour day. She was cheerful and gentle. She taught me what dedication to one's work really means. She was the model of empathy. She made me want to cry from the sheer gratitude to be showered with so much kindness. And so if I were to commission a new monument in London, it would be a work of art dedicated to a NHS nurse. Something life-size and approachable. Children would be taught to value our healthcare staff, diversity and kindness. And I hope adults too would nod with gratitude passing it by.

As for Kalashnikov in Moscow, I'm sure it'll serve its purpose and instigate fear cultivated by the current Kremlin government. I can only hope that one day Russia will earn its respect through its achievements in science and technology, education and healthcare, art and social justice.  

Where have I been for the past two weeks? I remember flying to Moscow and meeting a school friend I haven't seen for about ten years. We ate okroshka, a traditional Russian cold soup, in her kitchen. I remember flying to Yerevan and then travelling in Armenia, visiting dozens of ancient Orthodox Christian monasteries; trekking up Aragats, Armenia's tallest mountain; swimming in the cool water of the magnificent lake Sevan, gorging on apricots, watermelons and sudjuk, nuts candied in grape juice and honey. I remember the unbearable heat in Yerevan's hostel and cooler nights in the mountains with the Milky Way brightly painted over the dark sky. But all that time my imagination was captured by a story, a captivating tour de force with a gentle title: A Little Life.

Hanya Yanagihara, the author of A Little Life (2015), was born n Los Angeles in 1974. Her father was a doctor from Hawaii. Her mother was born in South Korea. Yanagihara studied Liberal Arts at Smith College and worked as a travel journalist and editor of the Condé Nast Traveler magazine. A Little Life is her second novel, which took just 18 months to write. Neither Yanagihara, nor her agent expected it to be a success. A Little Life was shortlisted for Man Booker Prize in 2015 (and many other literary prizes). I am genuinely puzzled why it didn't scoop it. To me, it is a masterpiece. I haven't read anything quite like it in a while and I fear I never will. It's an outstanding novel with brilliantly drawn devastating characters, a compelling plot and a deliciously rich vocabulary. It's like yes, Nescafé would do in the time of need, but there is nothing like the deep aroma and complex flavour of properly roasted, ground and brewed coffee.

It's the characters that make A Little Life truly unputdownable. There is something almost mystical about a female author being able to carve, dissect and serve male psyche with such a clinical understanding of the subject matter. The central characters - Jude, Willem, JB, Malcolm and Harold - are vibrant, flawed and 100% authentic. Their virtues are obvious but it's their insecurities, fears and blemishes that draw in the readers. It's precisely why I devoured the 700-page volume so quickly.

The most interesting thing about the novel is that every person who has recommended it to me had described it differently. For my friend from Melbourne it was a novel about the New York art scene - inspiring, creative and competitive. Another friend described it as an ode to Boston and New York, cities he loves. My actor friend said that A Little Life was about love - an unhappy love story. Literary critics wrote about gay relations, social problems in America, New York bubble - you name it. It really is a multifaceted creation, like a savoury pastilla, dusted with icing sugar, which conceals dozens of thin layers and a punchy filling inside.

For me, A Little Life is about friendship. Just like Elena Ferrante, who unveiled every crease, every wrinkle about female friendship in her Neapolitan trilogy, Yanagihara succeeded in portraying male friendship. Personal ambitions, envy, jealousy, inability to open up and share tightly guarded secrets and fears have made it onto the pages of A Little Life. At some point I was screaming at my Kindle frustrated with the main characters as if they were people living and breathing, as if I could influence their lives. Even now I keep thinking about them, dearly familiar and yet intangible, floating somewhere between reality and fiction. The novel made me think deeply about my own friendships and their inevitable knots and tangles. It's reassuring that my own life lines have these to hold on to.

"Through insightful detail and her decade-by-decade examination of these people’s lives, Yanagihara has drawn a deeply realized character study that inspires as much as devastates. It’s a life, just like everyone else’s, but in Yanagihara’s hands, it’s also tender and large, affecting and transcendent; not a little life at all," writes Nicole Lee in her review of the book for Washington Post. The beauty of fiction is that it inspires and complements our own lives; it challenges and it soothes; it causes a storm but also provides a much needed perspective just when our own lives seem so completely overwhelming.