Published: 15/08/2019

Written with an understated power and quiet lyricism, Ogawa’s dystopian fable presents a future society where memory is malleable and recollection can vanish in an instant. A nuanced meditation on the loss of identity and the transience of the self, The Memory Police is a devastating novel of rare prescience from one of Japan’s greatest writers.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
A compelling speculative mystery by one of Japan's greatest writers.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781846559495
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 407 g
Dimensions: 222 x 144 x 29 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'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
'The fresh take on 1984 you didn't know you needed.' - Washington Post
'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.' - TIME Magazine, Best Books of Summer 2019
'Ogawa lays open a hushed defiance against a totalitarian regime by training her prodigious talent on magnifying the efforts of those who persistently but quietly rebel... mesmerizingly direct prose.' - Japan Times
'Explores questions of power, trauma and state surveillance...particularly resonant now, at a time of rising authoritarianism across the globe.' - New York Times
'A work about identity, authoritarianism and self-expression.' - i
'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.' - New York Times Book Review
'An allegorical tale about how we are defined and maintained by our memories. It is easy to fall under the thrall of the exquisite sadness pervading the whole experience.' - SFX
'Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind.' - Kirkus, starred review
'Ogawa's anointed translator, Snyder, adroitly captures the quiet control with which Ogawa gently unfurls her ominously surreal and Orwellian narrative. The Memory Police loom, their brutality multiplies, but Ogawa remarkably ensures that what lingers are the human(e) connections... As the visceral disappears, somehow the spirit holds on.' - Booklist
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