Yōko Ogawa

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.

When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.

The Memory Police

Tascha | alllora

sina (she/her) 

taylor miles hopkins

No matter how careful we are, we all leave behind little bits of ourselves as we go about our lives. 

“A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why It can hold so much. It's much like your memory, in that sense."

…but at some point it vanished. I suppose, over time, that happened to lots of things, even without the disappearances.

Lauri

"And what will happen if words disappear?" I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true.

No one knows and no one needs to know. Time is a great healer. It just flows on all of its own accord.

'Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,'

Aren't we together, right now, in spite of everything?

Gemma McCarthy

"If you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as waste- ful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever."

The Memory Police quotes

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