Book Shelf

La Policía de la Memoria

Yoko Ogawa • 2021

Una poderosa y delicada novela, de tintes orwellianos, sobre el control social y la memoria.<br/>En una pequeña isla se produce un misterioso fenómeno. Un día desaparecen los pájaros, al siguiente podría desaparecer cualquier cosa: los peces, los árboles... Peor aún, también se desvanecerá la memoria de ellos, al igual que las emociones y sensaciones que llevaban asociadas. Nadie sabrá ni recordará entonces qué eran. Hay incluso una policía dedicada a perseguir a los que conservan la capacidad de recordar lo que ya no existe. En esa isla vive una joven escritora que, tras la muerte de su madre, intenta escribir una novela mientras trata de proteger a su editor, que está en peligro porque forma parte de los pocos que recuerdan. La ayudará un anciano al que empiezan a fallarle las fuerzas. Mientras, lentamente, nuestra protagonista va dando forma a su novela: es el relato de una mecanógrafa cuyo jefe acaba reteniéndola contra su voluntad en un altillo. Una obra sobre el poder de la memoria y sobre la pérdida.

Colegiala (Spanish Edition)

Osamu Dazai • 2015

A young girl from a poor family is forced to commit a robbery for love. An elderly woman admits that one night, many years earlier, she was strongly attracted to a man she barely knew. A housewife tells her story of suffering upon discovering that her husband has a mistress. A young writer tells how her life got worse after winning a literary award. These stories included in Schoolgirl deal with tremendous delicacy of the feminist universe as well as its contradictions: shame, unrequited love, incomprehensible death of a loved one, extreme happiness, and, simply, the postwar thoughts that pass through the minds of young Japanese women.

Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen • 2025

After Dark

Haruki Murakami • 2008

Alternate cover edition here.<br/><br/>The midnight hour approaches in an almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home.<br/><br/>Later, Mari is interrupted again by a girl from the Alphaville Hotel; a Chinese prostitute has been hurt by a client, and she needs Mari's help.<br/><br/>Meanwhile Mari's beautiful sister Eri sleeps a deep, heavy sleep that is 'too perfect, too pure' to be normal; she has lain asleep for two months. But tonight as the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the TV screen, though the television's plug has been pulled out.<br/><br/>Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night?

El retrato de Dorian Grey / The Picture of Dorian Grey

Oscar Wilde • 2009

Oscar Wilde’s only novel is the dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty.<br/><br/>In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov • 1989

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in <b>Lolita</b>, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. <b>Lolita</b> is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

1984

George Orwell • 1961

<b>Written more than 70 years ago, <i>1984</i> was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever...<br><br><b>• Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s <i>The Great American Read •</i></b><br></b><br>“<i>The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.</i>”<br><br>Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...<br><br>A startling and haunting novel, <i>1984</i> creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.