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The Memory Police

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The Memory Police

By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers.
__________

Hat, ribbon, bird rose.

To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?
__________

Finalist for the National Book Award 2019
Longlisted for the Translated Book Award 2020
New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year

'This timeless fable of control and loss feels more timely than ever' Guardian, Books of the Year

'Echoes the themes of George Orwell's 1984, but it has a voice and power all its own' Time

'A novel that makes us see differently... A masterpiece' Madeleine Thien

©2019 Yoko Ogawa (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Science Fiction World Literature

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Critic reviews

The Memory Police is a masterpiece: a deep pool that can be experienced as fable or allegory, warning and illumination. It is a novel that makes us see differently, opening up its ideas in inconspicuous ways, knowing that all moments of understanding and grace are fleeting. It is political and human, it makes no promises. It is a rare work of patient and courageous vision (Madeleine Thien)
It's an age since I read a book as strange, beautiful and affecting… this haunting work reaches beyond…to examine what it is to be human… a remarkable writer
Masterly...Like Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and Mohsin Hamid's Exit West, Yoko Ogawa's novel transforms a familiar metaphor into imaginative truth. (Jia Tolentino)
In a feat of dark imagination, Yoko Ogawa stages an intimate, suspenseful drama of courage and endurance while conjuring up a world that is at once recognizable and profoundly strange
Explores questions of power, trauma and state surveillance...particularly resonant now, at a time of rising authoritarianism across the globe.
The fresh take on 1984 you didn't know you needed.
This is a work of immense precision that is drawing on allegory, that is drawing on myth, that is drawing on dystopia and is doing that deftly. It is the work of a Japanese master who transcends her cultural context to speak to us on a level that is universal.
The acclaimed Japanese writer’s fifth English release is an elegantly spare dystopian fable...Reading The Memory Police is like sinking into a snowdrift: lulling yet suspenseful, it tingles with dread and incipient numbness.
Ogawa exploits the psychological complexity of…[a] bizarre situation to impressive effect… her achievement is to weave in a far more personal sense of the destruction and distortion of the psyche
One of Japan’s most acclaimed authors explores truth, state surveillance and individual autonomy. Ogawa’s fable echoes the themes of George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, but it has a voice and power all its own.
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weird story very trippy, interesting concept playing with the idea of thing disappearing almost philosophical idea to play with. but the story takes ages to warm up and then ending is unsatisfying. some of the charter development needs work like R and the main character story arch feels incomplete. also u don't get a satisfactory explanation for what the world is the way it is.

interesting concept playing with the idea of thing disappearin

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Story great. Well written and performed. Didn’t like the ending. But otherwise really enjoyed it

Well written, no ending

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It was a story with promise that kept the attention. the further the plot developed the more questions there were to be answered and that was part of the pull of the book. but we never got any answers and the ending, as with the rest of the book, almost as though the author had several ideas in their head but didn't want there to be any cohesion to any of it. having been gripped by it i felt somewhat let down at the end.

a story without answers

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Brilliant performance by the narrator. Beautiful prose and a haunting story, one that will stay with you long after you finish the audiobook. A little slow to start but well worth sticking with it. Incredibly thought provoking, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I will be checking out other work from Yoko Ogawa.

Incredible

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This novel is so scary and haunting at the same time. I keep remembering parts of it when I watch the news or see what is "disappearing" in my country. I strongly recommend it, specially for people who live in the middle east.

What I really liked and hurts the most.. is that it is really happening in some parts of the world.

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