Memory Police, The (Shortlisted For The 2020 Intl Boooker)

Description:

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE**

'A masterpiece' Guardian

Discover a timely mystery about the loss of every day existence by one of Japan's greatest writers that featured in the Entertainment Weekly 'Quarantine Book Club'.

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?

The Memory Police is a beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, from one of Japan's greatest writers.

'One of Japan's most acclaimed authors explores truth, state surveillance and individual autonomy. Echoes 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and 100 Years of Solitude, but it has a voice and power all its own' Time Magazine

'A quiet dystopia of loss and confusion rather than repression, perhaps better suited for a world of misinformation and environmental degradation than the Big Brother nightmares of last century' Slate

Review: 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 * Guardian *
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 * Sunday Times *
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 * The New Yorker *
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 * Wall Street Journal *
Explores questions of power, trauma and state surveillance...particularly resonant now, at a time of rising authoritarianism across the globe. * New York Times, pick of the month *

Prizes: Short-listed for The Kitschies Red Tentacle Award 2020 (UK).

Author Biography:

Yoko Ogawa (Author)
Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope. Her works include The Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas, The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris and Revenge.

A compelling and surreal, Orwellian mystery by one of Japan's greatest writers.