Description

Forgetting is not an ordinary tale of catastrophe, but a harrowing journey into the darkest depths of the human soul. The work portrays Los Angeles as a city lost beneath a gray, leaden fog, caught in the grip of a collective spiritual suicide. This plague drives individuals to forget their names, their pasts, and most importantly, the one unique bond that makes them human: their conscience.

The story of Ethan Sorrell, the cold, rational "machine-man" of the financial world, begins with his forgetting of his wife Clara's birthday ritual. What seems like a simple personal lapse soon becomes the first sign of the world's gradual erasure. His wife's final words to him—"Forgetting is not always natural, Ethan. Sometimes it is a choice"—tie the philosophical knot of this dystopian nightmare.

The novel pits Ethan's search for personal redemption against the nihilistic philosophy of Malcolm Price, the demonic figure of the age, who preaches a doctrine of "conscience-less freedom." For Price, pain is a flaw, and memory a shackle; forgetting is liberation itself. Yet Ethan and his companions, the "Circle of Rememberers," argue that pain, sorrow, and conscience are the only true proofs of human existence. This is a struggle whispered by the spirit of Dostoevsky: if there is a crime, punishment is inevitable—and that punishment will be delivered within the mind's own prison.

Ethan's journey from Los Angeles to Houston and then to Detroit is not merely a search for his wife; it is a quest for an answer to humanity's most profound moral question: Is it better to live bearing the weight of guilt and sorrow, or to dissolve into a conscience-free peace?

This novel, declaring that in an age ruled by forgetting, remembrance is a revolution and suffering the highest form of devotion, is a haunting, unforgettable Dostoevskian drama. In this deeply personal yet universal story, the reader will discover that embracing the heavy, constructive burden of conscience is the only cure capable of saving humanity.