Description
On an unnamed island, a mysterious and inexplicable force causes objects, animals, and concepts to simply vanish from existence—and from the minds of its inhabitants. As things disappear without warning or explanation, the island's residents are compelled to forget them entirely, erasing all memory and trace of what once was. When the protagonist discovers that certain items are about to vanish, she must decide whether to surrender to this strange new reality or resist the erasure of her own memories and identity. Yōko Ogawa crafts a haunting, dreamlike exploration of loss, control, and the fragility of human consciousness in this mesmerizing dystopian novel. Blending the speculative elements of science fiction with the introspective, melancholic tone of literary fiction, *The Memory Police* presents a chilling meditation on what it means to hold onto the past in a world designed to forget.
Available Editions
paperback
Pantheon Books
Published Jan 1, 2019
274 pages
ISBN: 9781101870600
Reviews
1 rating
Community Reviews(1)
god there's so much to unpack here, i don't even know where to start. this is such a frigid slice of life book. there's not necessarily a traditional plot—there's no action sequences, no great discovery, no raging against the fascist regime that people look for in scifi dystopian literature. it's a quiet resignation to circumstance as the orwellian plot happens to the characters who go on with daily life anyways. things vanish, jobs become obsolete, buildings are destroyed, people are arrested, bodies sometimes are returned. the literary weight of the heavy snow that blankets the village and the officers suppressing their exterior lives juxtaposed against the disappearance of everything bit by bit suppressing their hearts and minds is daunting. it's just so pervasively cold and accepting without ever being defeatist. i love a book where the atmosphere is all there is.
Details
First Published
2019
Language
eng
Translation
Original: 記憶警察 (Kioku Keisatsu)
From: jpn
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa.