Abstract: Often compared to Yasunari Kawabata or Yukio Mishima for her narrative art and ability to deal with complex issues concerning solitude and loss, Yōko Ogawa distinguishes within the context of Japanese contemporary fiction through her exquisite technique of suggestion and also for her unusual dystopian discourse. Her novels, from Tender Whispers (1996) or The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003) to Hotel Iris (1996) approaches delicate and unusual characters and analyze profound states of mind and tensed human relationships, in order to offer the readers a convincing image of nowadays problems and challenges. On the other hand, the writer proves her capacity of depicting a dystopian universe with all its characteristics and contradictions, her novel The Memory Police (1994) being an extraordinary example of a deep meditation on numerous contemporary situations.
Keywords: Japanese novel, contemporary fiction, suggestion, dystopia, identity, solitude, loss.
Ogawa, Yōko. Suspine tandre [Tender Whispers]. Translated by Magdalena Ciubăncan. Bucharest: Humanitas Fiction, 2019.
Ogawa, Yōko. Profesorul şi menajera [The Housekeeper and the Professor]. Translated by Anca Focşeneanu. Bucharest: Humanitas Fiction, 2015.
Ogawa, Yōko. Poliția Memoriei [The Memory Police]. Translated by Raluca Nicolae. Bucharest: Humanitas Fiction, 2022.
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Thien, Madeleine. “Profound Allegory of Loss.” The Guardian, August 23, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/23/the-memory-police-yoko-ogawa-review.
