A review by jnzllwgr
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

5.0

This is a novel that slowly soaks your bones. Equally somnambulistic as it is a trim, modernist diary. There is space in the language for thoughts to creep in. Space for dreaming, tying different threads, constructing side-narratives. A Matryoshka doll mediation on memory, (self-imposed) imprisonment, material freedom, bodily freedom, autonomy of the soul. Faithful to a pace and syntax, it disarms the reader. A fabulist, dystopian, science fiction novel constructed of seemingly innocent, poetic reflections. To only imagine reading this in its native tongue, sends the head reeling.