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.
Yōko Ogawa Book order
Yōko Ogawa crafts prose that is gentle yet penetrating, masterfully conveying the subtlest workings of the human psyche. Her characters often seem unaware of their own motivations, their actions revealed through acute descriptions of their observations and feelings. Through this accumulation of detail, Ogawa explores themes of alienation, reflections of Japanese society, and the roles of women within it. Her works traverse a spectrum from the surreal and grotesque to the psychologically ambiguous and disturbing, often blurring the lines between the ordinary and the uncanny.






- 2024
- 2024
- 2024
Set in the spring of 1972, a twelve-year-old girl named Tomoko embarks on a transformative journey to stay with her enigmatic aunt's family in Ashiya, Japan. Surrounded by their opulent lifestyle and complex dynamics, she navigates relationships with her dignified aunt, charming uncle, and her precocious cousin Mina, who introduces her to a world of secrets and storytelling. Through Tomoko's eyes, the narrative explores themes of family, identity, and the bittersweet nature of growing up, culminating in a poignant reflection from her adult perspective.
- 2019
The Memory Police
- 288 pages
- 11 hours of reading
"To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed. When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?"--
- 2013
Revenge
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
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' Guardian Murderers 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 Snyder Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.
- 2010
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#8212;ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young Housekeeper#8212;with a ten-year-old son#8212;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#8212;like the Housekeeper's shoe size#8212;and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away
- 2010
In a crumbling, seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet, seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother fusses over the off-season customers.
- 2009
The Housekeeper and the Professor
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Beautiful, brilliant and profoundly strange - discover Yoko Ogawa. He is a brilliant maths professor who lives with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive and astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care of him. Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory. 'Has all the charm and restraint of any novel by Ishiguro and the whimsy of Murakami' Los Angeles Times 'Beautiful...the extraordinary Yoko Ogawa casts her spell... This a tale which will leave the reader gasping' Irish Times 'A poignant domestic drama of tender atmospherics and stealthy education...rapturous' Guardian 'Written in such lucid, unpretentious language that reading it is like looking into a deep pool of clear water... Dive into Yoko Ogawa's world and you find yourself tugged by forces more felt than seen' New York Times
- 2000
The Diving Pool
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Beautiful, twisted and brilliant - discover Yoko Ogawa. 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.
- 1990
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