[4] The novel, dream-like and melancholy in tone in a manner influenced by modernist writer Franz Kafka, takes place on an island with a setting reminiscent of that in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A film adaptation was announced in October 2020, with Lily Gladstone in the lead role and with Reed Morano slated as director and Charlie Kaufman as screenwriter.

The Memory Police raid the author's house as they celebrate the old man's birthday, but fail to discover the secret room, leaving them free.

[7] In an article naming it one of the best books of the Summer of 2019, Time wrote, "Ogawa's fable echoes the themes of George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude, but it has a voice and power all its own.

"[9] The New York Times compared it to the novels of Samuel Beckett and Kobo Abe, saying "Ogawa's ruminant style captures the alienation of being alive as the world's ecosystems, ice sheets, languages, animal species and possible futures vanish more quickly than any one mind can apprehend.

[14] Angeliki Papoulia and Christos Passalis produced the play Absolute Magic (Απόλυτη Μαγεία) for the National Theatre of Northern Greece, inspired by Ogawa's novel.

[17] In October 2020, Amazon Studios announced a film adaptation of the novel with Reed Morano slated as director and Charlie Kaufman as screenwriter.