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The Memory Police

Yōko Ogawa,

Stephen Snyder (Translator)

3.79 · Rating details · 30,834 ratings · 4,373 reviews

*** 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ***
*** NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ***

A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses--until things become much more serious ...more

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Paperback, 274 pages

Published July 28th 2020 by Vintage (first published January 26th 1994)

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Sep 28, 2020 Kat rated it it was ok · review of another edition

gotta consider how to describe my thoughts on this one, but i’m pretty confident that a three star is the way to go (although it’s honestly subject to change. u know me, indecisive af)

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Jul 19, 2019 Marchpane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: women-in-translation, 2019-releases, arc-from-netgalley, 19-20-19

The Memory Police is a hypnotic, gentle novel, that begins as a surveillance-state dystopia and ends as something more existential: a surreal and haunting meditation on our sense of self.

First published in Japan 25 years ago, and newly available in English translation, this novel has a timeless feel. The inhabitants of an unnamed island, living under an oppressive regime, experience a form of collective, gradual, amnesia. Upon waking, a seemingly random item—roses, birds, boats—will begin t ...more

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Sep 29, 2019 Robin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, japan, literary-fiction, translation, booker-prize-nominated, group-read

The horrors of forgetting

At first glance, The Memory Police, originally published in Japan in 1994 and now available in an excellent English translation, looks like a descendant of George Orwell's. Set on an unnamed island, objects are routinely "disappeared", both physically and also in the minds of the people. One day birds disappear. The next day it could be a type of candy. Anyone who dares to keep disappeared items is in danger. Those who actually remember them are in bigger danger. The The horrors of forgetting

At first glance, The Memory Police, originally published in Japan in 1994 and now available in an excellent English translation, looks like a descendant of George Orwell's. Set on an unnamed island, objects are routinely "disappeared", both physically and also in the minds of the people. One day birds disappear. The next day it could be a type of candy. Anyone who dares to keep disappeared items is in danger. Those who actually remember them are in bigger danger. The Memory Police, clad in luxurious uniforms, keep everyone living in fear. People who remember are taken away, never to return again.

When a young writer learns her editor is one of the people who remembers, she is determined to protect him by hiding him in a secret room in her house.

So, yeah, it's set up like a typical dystopian novel that deftly illustrates the insidious, dehumanizing claw of totalitarianism. And Yōko Ogawa does this very well. There's a quiet tension that stalks the pages of the novel. The fear, claustrophobia and struggle feel real. But she moves further (and I love that she did this), past the political, and into the larger, universal sphere of death.

Yes, death. Because the people don't just lose objects when things are disappeared. With each lost item, people also lose the associated memories. Thus, their hearts, souls, and selves suffer losses that cannot be recovered.

The young woman worries about the day when everything on the island is disappeared. When the people are disappeared. Her editor, a man who still can remember, keeps reassuring her. Just because things have been disappeared doesn't make them any less real. Even if everything disappeared, the stories would be there. He promises to protect the memories.

But with patient, hypnotic progression, the losses continue. It becomes less about the woman losing the world around her and more about the man losing the woman before his eyes.

I loved this, my first foray into Ogawa's large oeuvre. Written in deceptively flat, simple prose, it offers no easy answers. We don't know the wheres, whens, hows, whys. This has twinges of The Vegetarian and even The Metamorphosis, with weird, alienating transformations and much left to the reader to discern. It also feels particularly relevant in today's world (and here's where it gets political again) where our collective memories seem no better than that of a goldfish's swimming in the ether, where yesterday's news is swallowed up in today's hypocrisy.

Devastating and terrifying, this forced march towards complete loss. In a world where writers lose their voice, where is the hope? I like to believe it's tiny, and it's secret, and maybe it's not enough, but it's there, in a hidden room where the seeds of resistance and memory reside. ...more

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May 27, 2020 Ariel added it · review of another edition

I still think that the premise of this book is really thought provoking as an extension (and perhaps even conclusion?) to Orwell's 1984 but the plot didn't pull it together for me. I left with a lot of questions and frustrations continually asking "why?" or "how?" We had a great discussion about it on the podcast though! https://anchor.fm/booksunbound/episod... ...more

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Jun 18, 2020 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memory, science-fiction, totalitarian, japanese-authors, dystopian

We’re in a small town on a Japanese island. It’s dominated by the brutal “memory police” who make things disappear. Well, they make people make them disappear by declaring that ribbon or emeralds or stamps have to disappear and the citizens reluctantly but dutifully gather and hold bonfires to burn the now-forbidden item of the month. Some people keep forbidden items and if the MP’s hear of that they will kick your door in and confiscate the items and haul you off who knows where. It’s likely yo ...more

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Oct 10, 2019 Carol rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, edelweiss, translated, not-united-states, fantasy, zz-2019-atw-challenge, favorites, dystopian

The Memory Police is one of my top ten books for 2019.

Originally published in 1994, and released in translation only this year, and with a decent marketing budget as evidenced by the stunning cover and many interviews and reviews, it is compelling. Like all of Ogawa’s works, it is also timeless. It may strike us as a novel of the moment because state surveillance is its backdrop. But Ogawa’s stories are about how people respond to their circumstances, to limitations What motivates them. What con The Memory Police is one of my top ten books for 2019.

Originally published in 1994, and released in translation only this year, and with a decent marketing budget as evidenced by the stunning cover and many interviews and reviews, it is compelling. Like all of Ogawa’s works, it is also timeless. It may strike us as a novel of the moment because state surveillance is its backdrop. But Ogawa’s stories are about how people respond to their circumstances, to limitations What motivates them. What confuses them. What compels them to make this or that choice. Her language is calm, unexcited. She describes unnerving events with simplicity. Her words linger but don’t shout. Ogawa has written 20+ books and won multiple awards, but Memory Police is only her fifth to be published in English. All have been translated by Stephen Snyder, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College. If you tend to avoid literature in translation, get over it for this one, please. Snyder’s translation is amazing.

The Memory Police is Japanese – not American - so our protagonist isn’t the heroic sort determined to defy the system. She is a writer living on an island that none are able to depart. Objects and concepts occasionally disappear – sometimes physically, sometimes the community’s collective understanding of them evaporates such that they remain in existence but meaningless to all. Ogawa offers no explanation for either the mechanism or the rules of disappearing. Disappearing is useful primarily for exploring the role of memory in how we become us, as individuals and as communities, and whether – if those memories are dismantled – we change, and to what extent. Our protagonist is calm. She goes along to get along. As a child, she lost her mother to the memory police. She’s in her early 20s now and a novelist. But now other objects are disappearing – music, roses, stories. Occasionally, people are taken away by the Memory Police and never seen again.

Because she fears for good reason that her editor, R, is at risk of being disappeared (in the South American manner familiar to all in the 1970s), she finds a way to hide him – with the assistance of a friend - in a room hidden between the floors of her home. The suggestion of Anne Frank, an inspiration Ogawa has flagged in multiple interviews, acts as a bit of distraction for the reader. R is the defender of community and individual memory, of the importance of writing and reading as a means of preserving the past and understanding who one is. Ogawa is ever the mistress of misdirection. As the pages turned, I worried unceasingly about R and the dog*. Meanwhile, in the moment I missed the forest.

At one point, our writer-protagonist is working on a story about a typist whose instructor interacts with her in ways that are at first dismaying, then baffling, and finally cruel. Her story is presented in segments, without any framing. One of the irresistible and confounding mysteries of The Memory Police is the significance of the story-within-a-story. I promise you, you’ll spend a lot of time contemplating how the two stories relate and perhaps arriving at a handful of possibilities. If you bring an ounce of humility to The Memory Police, you’ll remain a little uncomfortable and a tad uncertain about the interpretation you choose. I love that Ogawa leaves us with more questions than answers.

In a profile of Ogawa published August 12, 2019, the NYTimes included the following quote, “Ogawa considers herself an eavesdropper on her characters. ‘I just peeked into their world and took notes from what they were doing,’ she said.” Her eavesdropping is unparalleled. Enough to make a fan of a champion-dystopian-avoider like me.

*If you're worried about the dog, (view spoiler)

...more

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Nov 24, 2019 Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, edelweiss-books, magical-realism, women-in-translation, japanese-literature, world-literature, literary-fiction

‘’Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here; my mother used to tell me when I was still a child. ‘’Transparent things, fragrant things...fluttery ones, bright ones...wonderful things you can’t possibly imagine. It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is one this island. Things go on disappearing, one by one. It won’t be long now’’, she added. ‘’You’ll see for yoursel ...more

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Feb 09, 2020 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020

Quiet and understated, The Memory Police reflects on what it means to remember the past in the face of state repression. The allegorical novel follows an unnamed writer living on a remote island locked in perpetual winter, ruled by an authoritarian gang of police who slowly banish residents’ memories of all they’ve ever known, from rose gardens to novels. Not all the residents forget, though, and those who don’t are rounded up and killed by the police; the story centers on the writer’s fraught a ...more

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Aug 15, 2019 Olivia (Stories For Coffee) added it · review of another edition

Shelves: one-setting-close-quarters, quiet-drama, favorites, library-book, translated

This book cannot be rated because it surpasses that structure of confinement that a star rating can give. I picked this book up from my library after seeing it in B&N and reading the blurb, “a haunting, Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance.” I was hooked from the beginning. It takes a lot for me to almost finish a book in one sitting, but this story was so haunting and compelling, like a sleepy nightmare unfolding before you while you are unable to look away.

Told in a way tha ...more

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Jun 02, 2020 Adina rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, mbi2020, fantasy-sf, japan, btba-2020

Shortlisted for International Booker prize 2020

This was the final book I read from the International Booker Prize shortlist. When I first finished the short novel I considered my reading experience to be of 4* but after more than a week (and no review) I realized my memory of my reading experience started to fade and my rating to lower a bit.

“My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if t ...more

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Apr 16, 2020 Henk rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese-literature, owned

Still, unsettling and meditative. Homes in on being oppressed and loss of memory, and how far a gliding scale can go - Nominated for the Booker International Prize - 4 stars
My soul seems to be breaking down. I said those last words cautiously, as though I were handing over a fragile object.

Dystopian vibes that reminded me of a lot of other classics in the genre
I knew somehow that she wasn’t actually crying. I knew somehow that she was too sad to cry - her tears were simply drops of liquid appear ...more

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Dec 14, 2019 Beata rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It is ages since I read '1984', but all my memoeries of reading this novel returned to me while I became engrossed in The Memory Police.
An island where everything gradually disappears and where everybody is under surveillance of the Memory Police ... Not everybody, however, notices that the world around them is changing, and those who do, seek to preserve what they can, and in this way become the enemy.
Even in the totalitarian states people were not deprived of what they cherished: memories of t ...more

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Jun 25, 2019 Meike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-read, japan

Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
Who we are strongly depends on our past experiences and the reality that has surrounded us, so what happens if, bit by bit, this reality is made to disappear, and with it the memories ingrained in our hearts? In Yoko Ogawa's highly allegorical novel, the enigmatic "memory police" is controlling the population of a remote island, subjugating the inhabitants by continually forcing them to destroy and forget things like roses, perfume or birds, Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
Who we are strongly depends on our past experiences and the reality that has surrounded us, so what happens if, bit by bit, this reality is made to disappear, and with it the memories ingrained in our hearts? In Yoko Ogawa's highly allegorical novel, the enigmatic "memory police" is controlling the population of a remote island, subjugating the inhabitants by continually forcing them to destroy and forget things like roses, perfume or birds, and all memories attached to them. Every lost memory leaves a new hole in people's hearts, but those who won't forget will be taken away and might get killed. How long can a person endure when those trying to control their mind eat away at their heart?

Our protagonist is an unnamed young novelist, thus a person who professionally creates coherence and identity, who aims to preserve and represent the world in narratives. When the memory police prepares to arrest her editor because he is unable to erase his memories, she hides him in her home, aided by an old man she befriended. Secretly, she tries to proceed working on her latest novel about a woman who has lost her voice - this whole novel-within-the-novel is twisting and reflecting the narrated world, asking questions about expression (losing your voice and losing your memory), freedom (being phsyically and psychologically captured), and death (losing your identity and losing your phsyical self). In all constellations Ogawa presents, I was fascinated by the protagonists' coping mechanisms, which you could often just as well call self-betrayal - this text is also a meditation on the workings of the mind under the conditions of authoritarian terror or human cruelty.

In this novel, a lot remains unexplained, e.g. why some people can and others can't forget as ordered by the memory police, what the ultimate goal of the memory police is (if they even have one beyond total control), or who their bosses are. Sometimes, I also felt like the author wasn't able to stringently employ her narrative concept, because how should the characters refer to things after they have disappeared? On top of that, there is the theme of climate change hovering in the background, but it isn't coherently tied into the main storyline. Still, these factor do not diminish the impact of the text, which more than anything is set up to be an allegory. In this respect, Ogawa's work reminded me of the wonderful Han Kang.

"The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can only stop when everything is in ashes", explains the narrator's editor at one point. This book contains numerous sentences like this one, investigating the relationship between memory, feelings, freedom and identity. A very worthwhile read, cleverly constructed and rendered with a lot of poetic sensibility. ...more

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Feb 23, 2020 Alice Lippart rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, translated, read-in-2020

Such a great concept but ended up being a very vague and kind of boring.

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Feb 09, 2020 Richard Derus rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed

Real Rating: 2.5* of five

This book is indicative of a problem that I'm having. It's a great idea, it's a very moody and atmospheric book, and it doesn't have an identity: does it want to be a horror novel, a dystopian oppression-is-bad tract, or a metaphorically rich fable/take-down of Western culture?

It, and therefore I, do not know.

It seems to me that a significant number of books published at this moment either are, or perceived to be, similarly multifocal. (That white lady's dirt book, for e ...more

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Jul 04, 2020 Jenna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: out-of-asia, speculative-fiction, dystopia

“But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance.”

This was an odd book, reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451. We are on an unnamed island, with an unnamed author and her unnamed editor and unnamed elderly friend. At the orders of the Memory Police, things disappear forever. Hats, calendars, novels. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what gets "disappeared". Perhaps names too have already disappeared by the time we e ...more

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Sep 08, 2019 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese-fiction, 2019, translated-fiction

4.5 rounded up.
https://www.readingavidly.com/2019/09...

It wasn't too long after starting this book before I noticed something strange about it. By page 98, it hit me that for a story labeled as "Orwellian," it was written in a surprisingly quiet tone. Without discounting the bizarre events recounted in this book, the understated style alone was actually disturbing in its own right, and I experienced a sort of weird off-kilteredness throughout the story.

Actually, the book works on two very diffe 4.5 rounded up.
https://www.readingavidly.com/2019/09...

It wasn't too long after starting this book before I noticed something strange about it. By page 98, it hit me that for a story labeled as "Orwellian," it was written in a surprisingly quiet tone. Without discounting the bizarre events recounted in this book, the understated style alone was actually disturbing in its own right, and I experienced a sort of weird off-kilteredness throughout the story.

Actually, the book works on two very different levels. The "Orwellian" tag is appropriate given how this novel is written, but there is much more going on here in terms of memory and the self. As author Silvia Moreno-Garcia says in her NPR review of this novel,

"If you view The Memory Police as one big, fat metaphor for state control -- and I'm sure many people will see it as that -- you'll probably find more pleasure in it than if you attempt to consider it in other terms."

It works both ways; while reading the novel and attempting to tie into it thematically, the thought of what the Memory Police might cause to disappear next haunted me right up until the ending, of which I'll say only that it might just leave people scratching their heads with a big WHAT? standing out in their minds.

Pay attention to the novel within the novel, also surreal but telling. Most importantly of all, if you can just accept that things are the way they are with no explanation as to why, the reading of it will be that much more of an experience in the long run. I finished this book well over a week ago one morning about 2 a.m., laid there thinking about it for another two hours, and it hasn't left my head yet. It is one of the strangest books I've read, but honestly, for me, that's part of the appeal.

Recommended with the caveat that this is a novel that will likely leave readers with more questions than answers; there is no explanation as to the why of things, described here as "the laws of the island;" they just are. While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, I loved this book; then again, I'm very much drawn to novels that I've labeled "strange with purpose," so I'm not surprised. ...more

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Feb 01, 2020 Hannah Greendale rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian, dnf, asian-literature

DNF at page 34.

Great concept, but this reads like it was drafted by a high school student in their first writing class. Perhaps its finesse was lost in translation?

The river itself was only a few yards wide at this point, and my grandfather had built a small wooden bridge to the far bank - though it was now in a state of disrepair.

But why would someone be standing out there?

I turned that question over in my head as I considered what to do. Perhaps it was a burglar. No, a burglar wouldn't kn

...more

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Jan 13, 2020 Zoeytron rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: public-library

One by one, things are disappearing, and with them, the memory of them. It's as though these things never existed. Holding onto memories is to run afoul of the Memory Police. You want to avoid that at all costs. The Memory Police have a way of homing in on the ones who remember, and those unfortunates are taken away. Do not expect to see them again.

Haunting and surreal. One day you wake up and the songbirds are gone, then the roses vanish. You are right to fear what might come next. If bo ...more

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Aug 15, 2020 Prerna (on semi-hiatus) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: magical-realism, man-bookering, philosophical-fiction, dystopian

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020!

Every page of this book was like reliving the queer feeling I usually try to fight on waking up. I hate waking up, I hate slowly assembling my consciousness and rationality while still trying to grasp those wisps of dreams that linger in my mind like the remnants of some illogical, irrational, gravity defying, conservation violating world that only my subconscious mind is allowed in. It always feels as though I'm leaving something important beh Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020!

Every page of this book was like reliving the queer feeling I usually try to fight on waking up. I hate waking up, I hate slowly assembling my consciousness and rationality while still trying to grasp those wisps of dreams that linger in my mind like the remnants of some illogical, irrational, gravity defying, conservation violating world that only my subconscious mind is allowed in. It always feels as though I'm leaving something important behind, some sort of divine knowledge. I break my focus for two seconds and these wisps also disappear, and only a notion of an impenetrable world remains.

Assuming there is a connection, however vague, between our sense of self and the objects that surround us, what happens to the self if these objects abruptly disappear, leaving behind just a thin, flimsy reflection in the deep recesses of our minds? We have no memory whatsoever of these objects, but a first glance of them does spark a vague recognition only to be swallowed up immediately, and is replaced by an immense sense of loss and confusion.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined.

The inconceivability of non-existence is a haunting theme throughout the book. On an island where objects disappear randomly and retaining any memory of them is a crime, the people live in a murky, surreal state of scarcity and fear. Our unnamed protagonist often contemplates the inevitable disappearance of her very self, her body and tries to structure her complicated emotions by writing novels which themselves center around loss and the acceptance of loss.

What I found to be most striking in this book were the anomalies, the people who remember, who hide (and often do not succeed) from the aggressive force of the 'memory police'. Survival for them is a complex play, a tricky matter of concealing their retained memories and intact perception in a world whose edges are slowly crumbling away.

Although marketed as a dystopian novel, this book is much more than that. It deals with many important themes: the transformation of a world from efflugent to derelict (given the current state of world affairs, this is probably something we will have to deal with soon), the wiping away of identity, the oppressive forces that impose upon us a life of suffering, the struggle to retain a sense of self despite massive irreversible changes, and of course love.

Stray observation: I think Yoko Ogawa has a thing for birthdays (can't blame her). There are simple yet elegant birthday celebrations in both The Housekeeper and the Professor and The Memory Police, although strangely, they are both immediately followed by anxiety inducing storylines. ...more

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Dec 21, 2019 Pedro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

George Orwell meets Haruki Murakami in this disturbing and unsettling but also weird and wonderful story about an island where things keep on disappearing and can’t be remembered.

In the island, to remember is to be in danger.

I loved the gentle and simple prose. I loved the originality and unpredictability of the plot. I loved the wisdom. I loved the claustrophobic feeling. I loved the imagery and the weirdness and how thought provoking everything was. And most of all I loved the fact that I di ...more

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Jun 20, 2020 Beverly rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A memorable novel about the loss of memory, The Memory Police is a dystopian tale, but there are no rescuers plotting to save everyone. The town's people who are undergoing the loss of common, everyday objects are very passive about their own ability to stop what is happening. As these things are disappeared, so are their owners' memories of them. They can't remember what a rose is, what it looks like or what it smells like, how it feels.

Ogawa writes with a tranquil, surreal tone. Her characters ...more

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May 06, 2020 Neale rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker.

The novel opens with the protagonist’s mother telling her that she too will soon forget something. Something of hers will “disappear” as everything does on the island. However, it is not only memories that are lost. Physical items as well are lost forever, sometimes leaving behind remnants or pieces that the inhabitants throw in the river or burn. It does not take long for that object or memory to be forgotten, never thought of again, as it now cease Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker.

The novel opens with the protagonist’s mother telling her that she too will soon forget something. Something of hers will “disappear” as everything does on the island. However, it is not only memories that are lost. Physical items as well are lost forever, sometimes leaving behind remnants or pieces that the inhabitants throw in the river or burn. It does not take long for that object or memory to be forgotten, never thought of again, as it now ceases to exist.

However, it turns out the protagonist’s mother, who is a sculptor, has been keeping objects that have supposed to have “disappeared” in a cabinet in her basement. She lets the protagonist view and feel these objects from time to time explaining to her what they are. These items, such as jewels, perfume, etc are wondrous to the protagonist. Wondrous because she has never seen them before, they were “disappeared” before she was born. Her mother has kept them and their memories. However remembering and keeping objects that have disappeared is an invitation to the Memory Police.

The inhabitants of the island will adjust their lives around these disappearances. A milliner will change to making umbrellas when hats are forgotten. A mechanic will become a security guard when the ferry he used to maintain disappears. If anybody has a problem with these changes or they retain their memory, the Memory Police step in. Anybody who retains their memory, or anybody who aids them are taken away by the Memory Police and are never seen again.

The protagonist of this novel, whose name we are never given, in fact no character’s names are revealed, is a writer and is working on her fourth novel when novels disappear. This novel is paramount to the narrative and Ogawa devotes entire chapters to it. The main character’s ordeal, although not obvious, mirrors the protagonists. However, let me return to the naming subject. Nobody, apart from the protagonist’s editor who is referred to as “R” is named in this novel. The island, the town, the streets and the people, none are named. For a novel that is predominantly about memory, I think we can say that this is intentional. What is the significance of the “R”? You tell me. The main character of the “novel” within a novel is learning to type and when first learning to type letters are typed out over and over in repetition to memorise their position on the keyboard. Another reference to memory and perhaps where the “R” comes from. Clutching at straws, I know, but trying to figure out what Ogawa has written and why is, in my opinion this novel's greatest strength..

I think that most readers will see what is coming when the inhabitants themselves start disappearing limb by limb.

There is so much going on in this novel. If your book club is looking for a book that will promote major discussion, then look no further.

From issues such as totalitarian governments, police states, freedom and oppression. To the importance of memory, how it is retained, how it is unreliable, how it is vital. I even wonder if the slow disappearing of the inhabitants, their limbs disappearing one at a time, is a metaphorical way of reminding us of our mortality. In the midst of life we are in death.

The reader cannot help but think about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust when the protagonist hides her editor in a “secret” room beneath the floorboards.

Although not for everybody, especially those who have a dislike for allegory, this is a novel whose story is an ocean to explore. 4.5 Stars!

* Having just started rereading this novel, I have come across a family whose name is given and I remember the dog at the end is named as well. Dang it! * ...more

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Feb 05, 2020 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There is this Japanese idea of "Mono no aware" or the "pathos of things." How ephemeral beauty is, how everything is transient and fleeting - and the sadness that accompanies that realization. And that sentiment pervades the book as things disappear. Something in the air changes, and on waking the people stumble outside to understand what has been removed from their lives. One morning the rivers are covered in petals slowly floating out to sea as roses join hats, ferries, and birds as the thing ...more

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Aug 27, 2019 Hannah Nagle rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apoc, no-thanks, audiobook

I thought the premise for this was super cool, but the actual story lacked so much.

We enter a world in which things can disappear from both life and the minds of citizens. Roses? Gone. Birds? Gone. Hats? Gone. Novels? Gone.

No one knows where it goes, they just know it has left. They readjust their lives accordingly and move forward. Well, most do anyway. There are a select few who do not forget and those people are in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police.

I was so intrigued by this ...more

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Apr 17, 2020 Blaine rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: from-library, 2020

The Memory Police are an arm of a totalitarian state enforcing its rules, so the obvious comparison for this novel is 1984. But in this book, the citizens aren’t just pretending they’ve always been at war with Eurasia. Here, objects like birds or green beans or roses somehow truly disappear almost overnight, and all but a few people quickly forget that such objects ever even existed.

How this process of disappearances and lost memories is occurring is left unexplained, and was the beginning of m ...more

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Dec 20, 2020 Caro the Helmet Lady rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: social-fiction, 2020-reads, japanese, books_about_books, cocaine-sadness

What a beautifully sad book. Like someone here said, this book has many levels. Some of them visual and some that are subconscious. It probably touched the latter in me, one night after reading it I was dreaming about it intensively, trying to solve the mystery of the titular memory police. Must I say I never solved it.
I guess it was an intensive experience. While nothing extremely spectacular happened in the book, there was a certain tension. While I was definitely sure that something bad was g ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Hugh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, read-2020, translations

Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2020

An original and unsettling fantasy, more of a nightmare than a conventional dystopian novel. The narrator is a writer living on an island which is isolated from the world, where familiar objects suddenly disappear under the control of the Memory Police of the title, who are also trying to ensure that memory of what is lost is erased.

I could say much more but little of it would make sense...

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Aug 28, 2020 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was definitely the wrong book to read in the middle of a move.

Here, beautiful things are disappearing forever and people are disappeared too. It's a horrific dystopia that's one of the worst I've ever encountered because of the intensely personal effect it has on people.

Great painful writing about the personal experience of sensation evaporating from your life and leaving behind only a hollowness that you can't quite understand anymore. ...more

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Sep 26, 2019 Paul Fulcher rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, mbi-long-list-2020

Now longlisted for the International Booker and shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature

Silence fell around us all, as through we were steeling ourselves for the next disappearance, which would no doubt come — perhaps even tomorrow. So it was that evening came to the island.

The Memory Police has been translated by Stephen Synder from Yōko Ogawa's 1994 original. As with Revenge, Synder's translation is excellent, with prose that is simple yet powerful, although again as w ...more

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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
SciFi and Fantasy...: "The Memory Police" Discuss Everything Spoilers	43	115	Feb 28, 2021 06:19PM
Reading Women: 28) A Book by Yoko Ogawa	12	360	Feb 16, 2021 10:54PM
Goodreads Librari...: Please correct page count	4	30	Feb 03, 2021 02:40AM
Speculative Ficti...: January 2021: The Memory Police (no spoilers)	8	15	Jan 28, 2021 10:38AM
Speculative Ficti...: January 2021: The Memory Police (spoilers okay)	1	9	Jan 01, 2021 09:46AM
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Adult Sci Fi? Japanese female author I think? The story occurs in an island where mysterious things happen. Maybe the main character is a journalist? [s]	4	26	Sep 15, 2020 09:24AM
SFF Hot from Prin...: July 2020--The Memory Police (spoil away!)	11	28	Aug 27, 2020 07:19AM

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About Yōko Ogawa

Yōko Ogawa

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Yōko Ogawa (小川洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored „An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics“ with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a ...more