Seven books that grapple with memory and loss

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he is currently in the PhD program at the University of California, Davis.

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is his first novel.

At Electric Lit Lin tagged seven titles that grapple with memory and loss, including:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Published two years before he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ishiguro’s novel follows an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, as they move through a medieval Britain beset by an amnestic mist. With enormous difficulty, people remember: wars, lovers, children. Axl and Beatrice know they have a son, but struggle to remember much beyond this bare fact. They embark on a quest to find him once more, encountering relics, residues, artifacts of memories without remembrances. Ishiguro’s prose is rhythmic, placid, profound; this book took him ten years to write, and it may well stay with you for longer.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue