Yoko Ogawa – författare

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

Bokcirkelfrågor ingår.

Yoko Ogawa är en av Japans kändaste och mest ansedda författare. Romanen var nominerad till Kulturhuset Stadsteaterns internationella litteraturpris 2022.

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island’s inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.

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.

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.