He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is a sensitive but 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.

An enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family where one before did not exist.

About the Author

Yoko Ogawa (Author)
Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope. Her works include The Diving Pool, The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris and Revenge. Her most recent novel, The Memory Police, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Stephen Snyder (Translator)
Stephen Snyder is a translator and professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.

He has translated works by Kenzaburo Oe, Ryu Murakami, and Miri Yu, among others. His translation of Natsuo Kirino's Out was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best mystery novel in 2004, and his translation of Yoko Ogawa's Hotel Iris was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011.?

Reviews
Highly original. Infinitely charming. And ever so touching. * Paul Auster *
A perfectly sustained novel (a tribute to Stephen Snyder's smooth translation); like a note prolonged...a pause enabling us to peer intently into the lives of its characters...has all the charm and restraint of any by Ishiguro and the whimsy of Murakami * Los Angeles Times *
Beautiful...the extraordinary Yoko Ogawa casts her spell. Never before has the beauty of maths been so lovingly explored...a tender, gentle book...Ogawa is an original and establishes a world in a paragraph..This is a tale which will leave the reader gasping...Hopefully more of her exciting, thoughtful fiction is heading our way. * Irish Times *
Its unnamed characters suggest archetype or myth; its rapturous concentration on the details of weather and cooking provide a satisfyingly textured foundation * Guardian *
Alive with mysteries both mathematical and personal, this novel has the pared-down elegance of an equation * Oprah magazine *



Book Information
ISBN 9780099521341
Author Yoko Ogawa
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 138g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 12mm