At this point considerable suspension of disbelief is required, and to me the ending – though in its own way logical – did feel as though the metaphor had been extended perhaps a little too far, though at the same time Ogawa guides us into the story so gently that it doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to keep up with its alarming progression. The novel centres on this attempt at concealment and the relationships that develop between the three, and describes what happens as the disappearances become more problematic, including novels and, eventually, limbs. Among them is R, our narrator’s editor, whom she decides to hide in a secret room in her house with the help of an elderly friend.

While our narrator, a novelist, is going through the surprisingly effortless process of having her world gradually shrink in richness and meaning, a few people seem immune to the curse and are consequently rounded up by the military Memory Police. If people can no longer remember what it is for, what right does it have to be a part of their lives? It is not, then, so much memories being totally wiped (our narrators can still discuss the disappearances with some clarity) as that the meaning inherent in the object ceases to exist. The disappearances of these objects – hats, music boxes, roses – come about when the residents of the island wake up to find their memories of an object’s use fading, an event usually followed by a mass destruction of the object itself.

Set on a remote island off the coast of Japan, Ogawa’s novel, which was originally published in 1994 but remains frighteningly relevant today, is set in a dystopian future in which objects begin disappearing from everyday life, cast out by some unseen higher power whose rule is enforced by the ominous Memory Police.

Yoko ogawa the memory police