The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera.
(Click the book for a link)
Two quotes from the book:
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”
“Children, Never look Back!” and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. for children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.”
George Orwell gave a similar warning in his novel ‘1984’ the only thing he got wrong was the date !
“And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested…….”
David A Lockwood 