The Housekeeper and the Professor (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
  • Published: 3 December 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875442
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.00

The Housekeeper and the Professor (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Dec 2019
Paperback
1 Jul 2010
EBook
1 Sep 2010
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VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - following on from the success of Vintage Russian Classics and European Classics, these are covetable new editions of the best Japanese writers on the Vintage list

'This is one of those books 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

Each morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to one another. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant mathematical 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.

VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
  • Published: 3 December 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875442
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Yoko Ogawa

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, a collection of three novellas, The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris and Revenge.

portrait photo of Yoko Ogawa

Also by Yoko Ogawa

The Memory Police
Revenge
Hotel Iris
The Diving Pool
See all

Praise for The Housekeeper and the Professor (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

Alive with mysteries both mathematical and personal, this novel has the pared-down elegance of an equation

Oprah magazine

Strangely charming, flecked with enough wit and mystery to keep us engaged throughout... fairy-tale surrealism and quiet spiritual wisdom

Washington Post

This is one of those books 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

Beautiful...the extraordinary Yoko Ogawa casts her spell ...This is a tale which will leave the reader gasping

Irish Times

Where Yoko Ogawa's brilliance lies is in taking such an apparently stiff framework and bending it into a work of warmth and beauty; or showing us that mathematics is not a cold, hard, science, but an elegant, complex, shimmering art. This feat of literary spoon-bending is accomplished with such calm elegance that it quite takes the breath away

The Times Book Club