The Memory Police

Accept the things you cannot change or change the things you cannot accept?

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

May 19, 2026 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

The Memory Police is an unsettling novel. The descriptions I read in advance made it sound a bit like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. It is a dystopian novel, and it does involve the authoritarian suppression of knowledge and personal freedom, but while I think of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as “political” science fiction, The Memory Police is not exactly that. The most disturbing acts of suppression in The Memory Police come from within the people themselves. The story is set on an island where some […]

My mother was her most lively when she talked about this small bottle.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

December 20, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

By the author of The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris, Revenge, The Diving Pool, etc, this is a 1994 dystopian novel which is compared to Nineteen Eighty Four all over the cover, but is more clearly similar to Fahrenheit 451 for me. The method of control in this island society is the disappearing of words and memories associated with objects, concepts, people, and even professions. Our narrator is a novelist living on the island who is positioned uniquely because her father, an ornithologist, was one of the society’s first […]

Don’t Take The Memories

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

September 24, 2019 by Jake Leave a Comment

The Memory Police is the kind of dystopia I like. No Hunger Games-esque confrontations with the Big Bad. No sadistic rolling around in the concept (aka “torture porn”). No forsaking character for story. The characters drive this story. The society they live in impacts them and they adapt. It’s a well-told tale. I would have loved to have read this book in its original language. I feel like there are probably subtleties I could have picked up on. But what I did get was good enough. Yoko […]

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