These Memories Do Not Belong to Us by Yiming Ma, 224 pages.
In the not-too-distant future technology allows memories to be shared, as well as sold, manipulated, and distributed. In Qin, the last remaining global superpower that was once known as China, memories can also be illegal. In this book, one man inherits his mother's collection of contraband memories, and time is ticking down until the censors review his inheritance and punish them for possessing them. The memories are sorted into before the war, during the war, and after the war, but all of them call into question the narratives he has been asked to believe his whole life.
The author describes this as a "mosaic novel" where many chapters that are essentially short stories that come together to form a larger whole. The description of this book says that it's for fans of
Cloud Atlas, and I definitely see that comparison. Despite being hardly 200 pages, it feels vast and literary, seamlessly blending genres. My only real complaint is that I wish the frame story felt like it mattered a little more. I would definitely recommend this book widely.
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