Memory Piece: Barack Obama's Reading List 2024 (Paperback) - Lisa Ko

The award-winning author of The Leavers offers a visionary novel of friendship, art, and ambition that asks: What is the value of a meaningful life?

A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2024 | A VOGUE BEST BOOK OF 2024 | ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE READS OF SUMMER 2024

'There's no doubting Ko's talent' Daily Mail
'Ambitious . . . [Ko] is unafraid to wrangle big ideas' Observer
'One of those rare, sumptuous tales' Elle

As teenagers, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong and Ellen Ng are drawn together by their sense of alienation. 'Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,' they embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity.

By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As Giselle navigates an unfamiliar elite social world, Jackie contends with the internet's sinister shift towards surveillance and Ellen confronts the gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighbourhood, they must reckon with a world radically different from the one they dreamed of.

From the pre-digital 1980s to the visionary subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of friendship, art and ambition that asks: what is the value of a meaningful life?

About the Author

Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, which was a 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist, won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award. The Leavers was a national best seller and was named a 'best book of the year' by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Los Angeles Times, and others. Ko's short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and her essays and nonfiction have been published in The New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere.