The Memory Police cover art

The Memory Police

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Memory Police

By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

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.

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?

Finalist for the National Book Award 2019

Longlisted for the Translated Book Award 2020

New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year

©2019 Yoko Ogawa (P)2023 Penguin Audio Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political Psychological Science Fiction Island

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Pearl cover art
Slaughterhouse-Five cover art
We Have Always Lived in the Castle cover art
A Mother's War cover art
The Hidden Palace cover art
The Aerialists cover art
Lost Horizon cover art
The Watchmaker of Dachau cover art
Invisible Man cover art
The Ghost Writer cover art
The Rabbit Girls cover art
Chosen Ones cover art

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)

'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
All stars
Most relevant  
It was a story with promise that kept the attention. the further the plot developed the more questions there were to be answered and that was part of the pull of the book. but we never got any answers and the ending, as with the rest of the book, almost as though the author had several ideas in their head but didn't want there to be any cohesion to any of it. having been gripped by it i felt somewhat let down at the end.

a story without answers

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Story great. Well written and performed. Didn’t like the ending. But otherwise really enjoyed it

Well written, no ending

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This novel is so scary and haunting at the same time. I keep remembering parts of it when I watch the news or see what is "disappearing" in my country. I strongly recommend it, specially for people who live in the middle east.

What I really liked and hurts the most.. is that it is really happening in some parts of the world.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
weird story very trippy, interesting concept playing with the idea of thing disappearing almost philosophical idea to play with. but the story takes ages to warm up and then ending is unsatisfying. some of the charter development needs work like R and the main character story arch feels incomplete. also u don't get a satisfactory explanation for what the world is the way it is.

interesting concept playing with the idea of thing disappearin

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was absolutely hooked on this book. The narration was excellent and kept me engrossed the whole way through, though at times the plot got a bit side-tracked I thought. The premise was really interesting and thought-provoking, but sometimes I felt frustrated or that something was lacking - particularly at the end - as there were so many unanswered questions which although left me thinking, also left me frustrated - was there someone responsible, someone who maybe benefited from it, someone who engineered everything on purpose as it seems - or did the human race just get too arrogant and destroy itself?

Brilliant, thought-provoking, sometimes lacking

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant performance by the narrator. Beautiful prose and a haunting story, one that will stay with you long after you finish the audiobook. A little slow to start but well worth sticking with it. Incredibly thought provoking, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I will be checking out other work from Yoko Ogawa.

Incredible

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I generally hate it when authors set out to write a "thing" rather than a story that happens to convey a meaning and I'm not entirely sure if this does or doesn't entirely fit within my definition of a "thing."

You know that old adage about how, the bigger the topic you want to write about, the smaller the writing? You don't talk about bombs with napalm falling from the sky, or endless fire, you talk about the young child's sock half burnt on the charred road. This is what The Memory Police feels like. It chooses a world where something monumental is happening and it merely takes you through the motions of a young novelist's life.

You don't build a relationship to the three main characters, they always stay somehow distant from you. The narrator is never named, nor is the old man, and R, the narrator's editor, doesn't get more than a letter to define him. But in a way, it's that distance that makes this quietly disturbing. Like comedy, you find the characters in a circle of hell from which they have no escape, nor do most of them have an understanding of being in a circle of hell. Only you, the casual observer can realise the enormity of their disturbing lives. And like comedy, the ending doesn't grant a cathartic release.

But this isn't a comedy, far from it. The Memory Police are brutal only in their strictness and their efficiency. They don't beat people up, they don't shout at them outside of their investigations. They merely work effectively to ensure that the rules are followed and that disappeared objects are removed from the island. We don't get any political discourse, no discussion about whomever might be in charge. There's only the disappearances without any announcements or explanations and their strict enactment. And isn't that terrifying?

To me at least, the removed observation of the plot slowly progressing towards its inevitable conclusion is worthy of the horror genre, even though there's never any gore nor fear from the characters. R is committed to keeping our narrator alive and helping her remember, even when she's slowly letting go, accepting that she can only be what she is allowed to be.

There's maybe social commentary here about resistance, about considering it and making an effort even in the face of insurmountable difficulty.

Because of the way that the author approached the storytelling, the pacing is necessarily slow and I can see people getting impatient with it especially without a strong connection to the characters. But I felt that the plot makes up for it in capturing the imagination and making you wonder just where it will all land. I couldn't see it, even though I worried about it since about 50% in. And that, too, is quite pleasant.

All in all? Probably not a book for all, but if you enjoyed 1984, and if you have had other experiences with the more slow paced Asian setting books, then I think you might find this at least intriguing if not full on engrossing.

I have the same quiet horror completing it that I had after finishing Neal Shursterman's Unwind, which left me fairly scarred from a philosophical perspective.

Hellish and inescapable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was so disappointed and depressed by this book a good idea was not cleverly executed. We don’t know why and how things are disappearing. How people are functioning a society, driving, working without limbs? What is the aim of the Memory Police? How come there is mention of the things that are disappeared. For instance fruit disappeared but they eat and apple later on and dream of decorating the cake with fruit which should have been forgotten about. Ferry has disappeared but its memory and the boat still exists. r hiding in the windowless room and instead of him going up to a brighter room once in a while, people go down to his hole. No logic or common sense at all. I read this book for a book club. Otherwise would have given up. All the way I kept saying how stupid this is. Author seems to be obsessed with people loosing themselves.

One of the worst books that I read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.