A collection of storiesThe first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authorsFrom 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 teenaged 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, ...
"Highly original. Infinitely charming. And ever so touching." – Paul AusterA publishing phenomenon in Japan and a heartwarming story that will change the way we all see math, baseball, memory, and each other She is a housekeeper by trade, a single mom by choice, shy, brilliant, and starting a new tour of duty in the home of an aging professor. He is the professor, a mathematical genius, capable of limitless kindness and intuitive affection, but the victim of a mysterious accident that has rendered him unable to remember anything for longer than eighty minutes. Root, the housekeepers ten-year-old ...