Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award
A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.
On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear...

"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....

The manner in which Kathryn Johnston died so tragically at the hands of Atlanta narcotics police on the evening of November 21, 2006, anticipates and informs a number of very contemporary–and extremely volatile–issues that have become closely associated with the name of Ferguson, Missouri. As the "Black Lives Matter" movement makes clear, the issues center primarily around the relationship between racial identity and lethal police violence in...