The Memory Police (A Novel)

BOOK SUMMARY

Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award. A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.

On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Her works include The Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas; The Housekeeper and the Professor; Hotel Iris; and Revenge. She lives in Hyogo.

PRAISE

"Unforgettable. . . . A masterful work of speculative fiction." — Chicago Tribune

"Ogawa's fable echoes the themes of George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, but it has a voice and power all its own." — Time

"A masterpiece. . . . A novel that makes us see differently. . . . It is a rare work of patient and courageous vision." — The Guardian

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Trade Paperback
288 Pages
Fiction
8 in H | 5.2 in W | 0.9 in T | 0.7 lb