Housekeeper and the Professor by

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a gentle, luminous novel by Yko Ogawa, translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder. A brilliant mathematician, injured in an accident years earlier, can hold new memories for only eighty minutes, and a young single mother is hired as his housekeeper.

Each morning they must be introduced again, yet through his love of numbers, with puzzles built from her shoe size or birthday, a tender bond grows between the Professor, the Housekeeper and her young son, whom he nicknames Root. Quietly moving, it celebrates memory, family and the beauty of mathematics.

• Author: Yko Ogawa
• Translator: Stephen Snyder
• Publisher: Vintage
• Format: Paperback, 180 pages
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9780099521341