Yoko Ogawa

'Your body falling through space touches the deepest part of me'A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities. A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion. Driven by nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo. There she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the disturbing figure of the crippled caretaker. The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

" Ogawa] creates moments of breathtaking ugliness, often when least expected . . . but also sometimes a longing that is touching and tender." --Daniel Hahn, The IndependentFrom the award-winning author of Mina's Matchbox and The Memory Police, a dark and twisted psychosexual fever dream about the relationship between an innkeeper's daughter and their guest. In a crumbling seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother tends to the off-season customers. When one night they are forced to expel a middle-aged man and a sex worker from their room, Mari finds herself drawn to the man's voice, in what will become the first gesture of a single long seduction. In spite of her provincial surroundings and her cool but controlling mother, Mari is a sophisticated observer of human desire, and she sees in this man something she has long been looking for. The man is a proud if threadbare translator living on an island off the coast. A widower, he is the subject of eerie rumors around town--some say he may have murdered his wife. Mari begins to visit him on his island, and he soon initiates her into a dark realm of both pain and pleasure, a place in which she finds herself more at ease even than the translator. As Mari's mother begins to close in on the affair, Mari's sense of what is suitable and what is desirable are recklessly engaged. Yoko Ogawa's Hotel Iris is a stirring novel about the sometimes violent ways in which we express intimacy and the untranslatable essence of love.

"Each tale here seems to be its own torture chamber--dark and meticulous . . . More disturbing than the bloody imagery is the eerie calm with which each plot unfolds, as if one act of violence must necessarily transform into the portal for another." --The New Yorker A collection of eleven eerie and harrowing interwoven tales from the award-winning author of Mina's Matchbox and The Memory Police--now with a new introduction by Carmen Maria Machado. An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. A bereft and grieving mother attempts to connect with her dead son. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon's jealous lover vows to kill him. Desire meets with impulse and erupts, attracting the attention of the surgeon's neighbor--who is drawn to a decaying residence that is now home only to instruments of human torture. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and enemies--their fates converge in an ominous and darkly beautiful web. Sinister forces collide with a host of desperate characters in this deeply harrowing collection of interwoven tales from Yoko Ogawa, a master of the macabre. Eerie, suspenseful, and wonderfully unsettling, Revenge will haunt you until the very last page.

On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting starsAfter the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life. While the 1970s transform Japan, her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion is a place out of time; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pet pygmy hippo. Equally beguiling are Tomoko’s relatives, especially her cousin Mina. Their growing friendship draws her into an intoxicating world – one full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.'Beguiling' New Yorker‘Beautifully composed’ Financial Times‘Effervescent’ New York Times Book Review‘Transfixing’ Time'I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end' Ruth Ozeki

Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family. He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem--ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper's shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authors. From Akutagawa Prize-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a trio of novellas about love, motherhood, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures contain a hairline crack of cruel intent. A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool--a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life. A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination--but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister's? A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boardinghouse run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg. Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.

From the award-winning author of The Memory Police and The Housekeeper and the Professor, a hypnotic novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. "A story of first enchantments and last gasps... Effervescent." --New York Times Book Review "A transfixing coming of age tale." --TIME "One of the literary events of the year." --Parade In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt's family. Tomoko's aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home--and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company--are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family's pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion--Tomoko's dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family's patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko's cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand--her uncle's mysterious absences, her great-aunt's experience of the Second World War, her aunt's misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina's Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time--and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

En ung kvinna börjar arbeta som hemhjälp åt en matematikprofessor, som efter en bilolycka bara kan minnas saker 80 minuter åt gången. Trots att han sedan olyckan lever kvar i år 1975 och inte ens kan återge vad han åt till frukost kan han fortfarande berätta ingående om avancerade ekvationer och olösliga matematiska problem. När kvinnan börjar ta med sin tioårige son till arbetet inleds en varm och egenartad vänskap mellan de tre, med matematiken som gemensamt språk. En gåtfull vänskap är en förtrollande vacker berättelse om vad det innebär att leva i nuet, och om de märkliga ekvationer som en familj kan utgöra. YOKO OGAWA, född 1962, är ett av den moderna japanska litteraturens största namn. Sedan debuten 1988 har hon givit ut ett tjugotal böcker och En gåtfull vänskap har sålt i flera miljoner exemplar exemplar i hemlandet, där den också filmatiserats. På svenska finns även hennes roman De förlorade minnenas ö att läsa. "Högst originell, oändligt charmfull. Och enormt gripande." Paul Auster "Skriven på ett så ogrumlat och opretentiöst språk att det är som att blicka ner i en källa med kristallklart vatten." New York Times

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE MEMORY POLICE'A conspicuously gifted writer…To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state tinged with a nightmare, and her stories continue to haunt. She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance' GuardianMurderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders – locked in the embrace of an ominous and darkly beautiful web, their fates all converge through the eleven stories here in Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge. As tales of the macabre pass from character to character – an aspiring writer, a successful surgeon, a cabaret singer, a lonely craftsman – Ogawa provides us with a slice of life that is resplendent in its chaos, enthralling in its passion and chilling in its cruelty. Translated by Stephen SnyderElegant, novellas-in-translation, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars. After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life. The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse. Praise for Mina's Matchbox 'I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.' RUTH OZEKI, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness'Dreamy and whimsical, Mina’s Matchbox traffics in the themes at which Ogawa always excels: memory, identity, and nostalgia' Esquire, Best Books of the Summer 'A conspicuously gifted writer. . . To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state. . . She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance' Guardian‘Evokes the secret crushes and crushing secrets of girlhood with charm and elegance’ People‘Immersive and poignant. . . filled with wonder’ Bookpage'Beguiling' New Yorker, Best Books of 2024'The world Yoko Ogawa builds is quiet, warm and it should feel comforting. But there are peculiarities about the whole thing that keep you on the tips of your toes' NPR, Best Books of 2024 Reader Reviews‘I was totally swept away by it.’‘It's a beautiful coming of age story. I'd recommend it to any lovers of translated fiction!’‘Uplifting. And Pochiko, the pygmy hippo? A wonder.’‘A beautiful coming of age story’

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life. The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. As the two girls share confidences their eyes are opened to the complications of the adult world. Tomoko's understanding of her uncle's mysterious absences, her grandmother's wartime experiences and her aunt's unhappiness will all come into clearer focus as she and Mina build an enduring bond. Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina's Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt's family. Tomoko's aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home-and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company-are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family's pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion-Tomoko's dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family's patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko's cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel's end.? Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand-her uncle's mysterious absences, her German grandmother's experience of the second world war, her aunt's misery.? Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina's Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time-and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. "A story of first enchantments and last gasps... Effervescent." --New York Times Book Review "Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina's Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end." --Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt's family. Tomoko's aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home--and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company--are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family's pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion--Tomoko's dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family's patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko's cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand--her uncle's mysterious absences, her great-aunt's experience of the Second World War, her aunt's misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina's Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time--and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

La novela que lanz a la fama a Yoko Ogawa. Un canto a la amistad, el amor y el respeto, y una apasionante introducci n al mundo de los n meros. Un mes de marzo, una agencia de colocaci n env a a una joven empleada del hogar a casa de un hura o profesor retirado. Sin embargo, no es un profesor cualquiera: anta o fue un reconocido matem tico pero, tras un tr gico accidente, solo recuerda lo ocurrido en los ltimos ochenta minutos. Aunque siguen apasion ndole los n meros, debe apuntar las cosas importantes en papelitos para repasarlas todos los d as, incluida la identidad de quienes lo rodean; una situaci n que lo convierte en alguien muy vulnerable. Sin embargo, el profesor ir aceptando en su vida la irrupci n de la asistenta y de su hijo de diez a os, con quien comparte una afici n: el b isbol. Poco a poco se fraguar entre los tres una hermosa relaci n fundada en el afecto y en la transmisi n del saber. Una novela que devuelve la esperanza en el alma humana. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family. He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem--ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young Housekeeper--with a ten-year-old son--who is hired to care for the Professor. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper's shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

Vnutri nashej pamjati my vse absoljutno svobodny. Etot roman, napisannyj esche v 1994 godu, aktualen vo vse vremena. On o neizbezhnosti poter i tonkoj, no krepkoj svjazi cheloveka s ego pamjatju. Ob opredeljajuschem svojstve pamjati. O tom, chto, esli izjat pamjat iz cheloveka, na ee meste ostanetsja ne zapolnjaemaja nichem pustota. Pamjat, zakljuchennaja podchas v samykh privychnykh bytovykh veschakh, takikh kak lenta dlja volos, pochtovaja marka, ptitsa, fotokartochka ili gubnaja garmoshka, i est glavnyj geroj etogo nenauchnogo, no fantasticheskogo dejstva, palitra kotorogo prostiraetsja mezhdu sotsialnoj satiroj, utopiej i kafkianskim tragizmom. Vsem ljubiteljam "1984" Dzhordzha Oruella, "451 gradus po Farengejtu" Reja Bredberi, "Zhenschiny v peskakh" Kobo Abe i "Strany Chudes bez tormozov" Kharuki Murakami. Short-list Mezhdunarodnoj Bukerovskoj premii 2020 godaPerevodchik: Kovalenin Dmitrij Viktorovich