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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.
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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?
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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

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.
All stars
Most relevant
Interesting to listen to a novel painstakingly translated from Japanese into English.
Personally I found the ending unsatisfying with key questions left unanswered.

A slow burn with an ambiguous ending

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If you are wanting an action packed story, then this is not the right book for you. However if you, like me, enjoy glimpsing into a slightly altered version of our own universe, then buy this book.

In reading this story I felt as though I had discovered an artefact from a distant past - the diary of a girl trying to live in a disappearing word. The story teaches the significance behind the most commonplace objects in life, and illustrates how world destroying it would be to lose them.

I felt glimpses of our own world history patterned throughout the book, with references to hiding people in basements and book burnings that felt heavily reminiscent of nazi germany, as well as the more general theme of growing disconnection which i felt harkening to our present fight with and against technology. And there is lots of love is sprinkled in there as well, as it always is in life.

Overall, I loved this book.

An Achingly Beautiful Glimpse Into a Crumbling World Not Unlike Our Own

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Strange story. Had potential but failed to deliver. Unsure if it was an exploration of the dementia of a civilisation, or a remake of the diary of Anne Frank. Completely without a point or perpetrator.

Missed opportunity

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