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A review by tonyk
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
5.0
Wow. When I added this to my stack I had no idea the synergies that I was going to observe comparing the Japanese dystopian world created by Yoko Ogawa to the current situation we face as the world battles Covid-19.
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The story centres around a novelist who lives on an island governed by The Memory Police who ensure by force that the inhabitants are forgetting items that become ‘disappeared’. Not only does the item itself disappear, but it no longer holds any meaning for the inhabitants of the island, where once there were ribbons, fruit or birds now there is just a void.
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This is a haunting tale and one that reading in today’s climate certainly heightened my anxiety about the state of the world we are living in. As we have our personal freedoms encroached upon by this virus and slowly say goodbye to things that we may have taken for granted, how quick will we be to forget those things that become ‘disappeared’ from our lives?
•
The story centres around a novelist who lives on an island governed by The Memory Police who ensure by force that the inhabitants are forgetting items that become ‘disappeared’. Not only does the item itself disappear, but it no longer holds any meaning for the inhabitants of the island, where once there were ribbons, fruit or birds now there is just a void.
•
This is a haunting tale and one that reading in today’s climate certainly heightened my anxiety about the state of the world we are living in. As we have our personal freedoms encroached upon by this virus and slowly say goodbye to things that we may have taken for granted, how quick will we be to forget those things that become ‘disappeared’ from our lives?