Memory Piece

Barack Obama's Reading List 2024

By: Lisa Ko

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Paperback | 20 March 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
304 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.6 x 12.8 x 2.5

Paperback

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"Remarkable . . . vividly captures the urgency of youth, and becomes a heart-breaking elegy for a communal, almost utopian approach to urban life." Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

"Bright with defiance, intelligence, and stubborn love. To spend time with these characters is a gift." C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold

In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. "Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves," they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity.

By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet's early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister shift toward monetization and surveillance. And as a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighbourhood. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves.

Moving from the pre-digital 1980s to the art and tech subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of three lifelong friends as they strive to build satisfying lives in a world that turns out to be radically different from the one they were promised.

Industry Reviews

Remarkable . . . vividly captures the urgency of youth, and becomes a heartbreaking elegy for a communal, almost utopian approach to urban life.

A group portrait of three women who wrest meaning from a world that is closing down around them, Memory Piece is bright with defiance, intelligence, and stubborn love. To spend time with these characters is a gift.

Evocative and luminous. Ko once again introduces us to people we want to know deeply, then as always, delivers that and beyond. A glorious writer.

Wild and wonderful, punk and propulsive, Memory Piece is about three friends growing from girlhood into a sinister new world. It is about authenticity, surveillance, capitalism, queerness, and the internet. It is about-it is-everything.

Dazzlingly inventive and knowing, Memory Piece is a bold and affecting novel about resistance, solidarity, and friendship.

An urgent book that asks you to reflect on moments that feel definite but are actually transient, which is a real gift. Beautifully crafted too, whilst being so ambitious in its reach.

A moving, strikingly evocative exploration of New York's art, tech, and activism scenes across the decades. - Vogue

Ko has brought us one of those rare, sumptuous tales of art and friendship that feels both universal and inimitable. - Elle

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