Yiming Ma Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Yiming Ma is a published author.

He was born in Shanghai. He would spend a decade working in the tech and finance world, which would take him to Toronto, London, New York, Berlin and Johannesburg. He then fell in love with literature once more. Before he was in writing, he was named a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum for the work that he did at Pearson to expand access to affordable education for low-income families in Africa.

His debut novel is titled These Memories Do Not Belong to Us. It is a dystopian novel that contends with a re-named China being the lead superpower in the world and it is also a place where memories can be bought and sold. It was released in 2025 and is coming out from Mariner and McClelland & Stewart.

He attended and graduated from the Stanford MBA program. He graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar there. He also graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA program at Warren Wilson College, where he was the Carol Houck Smith Scholar.

Ma has also had his writing featured in a variety of publications and they have been nominated for awards. His writing has been featured in the Florida Review, the Guardian, the New York Times, Ricepaper, 4th Estate and more. His story “Swimmer of Yangtze” was the winner of the 2018 Guardian 4th Estate Story Prize.

His stories have been shortlisted for the Geist CanLit Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest, the Gulf Coast Prize, the Florida Review Editors’ Prize, the LitMag Virginia Woolf Prize, and the Commonwealth Prize. Yiming Ma has also received residencies and conferences from Tin House, Millay Colony, Sewanee, and Vermont Studio Center.

He is a first generation immigrant. Despite all the traveling he has done, the author is still trying to figure out where home is.

These Memories Do Not Belong to Us is the debut novel from Yiming Ma. It is a 2025 novel that fans of books like The Power and Cloud Atlas may really enjoy! This is a debut that has been called ‘beautiful’ and ‘prescient’. It’s set in the future where China with a new name has become the sole global superpower.

When the unnamed narrator was a young boy, his mother used to tell him stories of a world that existed before strangers could have their memories shared between each other.

Now the world is in the future, in a time that is ruled by the Qin Empire. Each of the citizens alive is fitted with a Mindbank. This is an intracranial device that can record memories and transmit them between minds.

The technology leads to Memory Capitalism, which means that people with money are able to buy the privilege of reliving the life experiences that others have had. It also shows new chances for manipulation because memories have the ability to be edited, to be marketed, and even to be corrupted for others’ personal gain.

Once his mother passes away, the narrator ends up inheriting a collection of memories that have been banned from her Mindbank. The memories are extremely dangerous, and even being in possession of them is something that could put his liberty in jeopardy.

Going across empires, genres, and even millennia, they are the stories of sumo wrestlers, of social activists, of swimmers without arms and watchmakers, all struggling in the backdrop of the Qin ascending towards global dominance.

The narrator is determined to give his mother’s memories to the world before they end up being destroyed forever. They may end up putting everything on the line in order to do so, including their own life.

Provocative, unique, compelling and powerful, this novel explores the ways that media and governments manipulate the tale of history in order to shape and control the collective imagination. It makes the reader look beyond convenient truths and look for true stories of love and sacrifice that cannot be erased.

Check out These Memories Do Not Belong to Us to get the full story and follow along with every detail in a completely creative work that brings an original tale to the world of dystopian science fiction that will have readers turning the pages to get to the end!