Yoko Ogawa
Japanese novelist who writes in Japanese and is widely read in English translation. The Memory Police, her most celebrated novel, is a Kafkaesque exploration of disappearance and loss. Her work is admired for its quiet, unsettling power.
Works
- The Memory PoliceTotalitarian government makes citizens forget objects; woman hides contraband novels
- Hotel IrisWoman's tangled affair with a young man mirrors her complex relationship to desire
- The Diving PoolThree stories exploring desire and the darker impulses of an elite swimming pool
- RevengeCollection of darkly comic stories linked by themes of violence and twisted obsession
- The Housekeeper and the ProfessorTender novella about an elderly mathematician, his memory-loss, and his caregiver's son