The Housekeeper and the Professor

His memory lasts eighty minutes. The bond they form lasts far longer. He is a brilliant maths Professor with a peculiar problem: ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, hired to care for him. Each morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper must be introduced again. He cannot remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant mathematical equations from the past. When the Housekeeper’s son begins visiting after school, the Professor gives him the nickname Root and welcomes him into a world of numbers, baseball, meals and small rituals of care. Ogawa writes with the same clarity and restraint as the equations the Professor loves. This is Japanese literary fiction in its most tender : a novel where mathematics becomes a way of noticing, caring and making a fragile world briefly whole. '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 © Yoko Ogawa 2009 (P) Penguin Audio 2026