Yoko Ogawa

From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, here is a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel’s end. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’s experience of the second world war, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

A Novel

Mina's Matchbox

Novela yang anda pegang ini mengisahkan sebuah bangunan asrama dalam masa lalu seorang perempuan yang menyendiri. Suaminya bekerja di luar negeri. Ketika sepupunya meminta tolong mencarikan asrama untuk tempat tinggal selama menempuh kuliah di Tokyo, si tokoh utama teringat akan asrama lamanya. Di tempat yang dikunjunginya ini berbagai perasaan ganjil terkuak kembali. Asrama dikisahkan dengan cara yang amat dekat sekaligus ganjil. Ia menggambarkan bagaimana kesepian yang menghuni kepala seorang perempuan menciptakan ketegangan yang simbolik dengan masa lalunya. Dengan cerdik, Ogawa menutup novela ini dengan adegan yang layaknya sebuah mimpi, atau lebih tepatnya, sebuah mimpi buruk. * “Yoko Ogawa mampu mengekspresikan cara kerja paling halus dari psikologi manusia dalam prosa yang lembut namun tajam.” —Kenzaburō Ōe, peraih Nobel Sastra 1994 Pengantar Yoko Ogawa telah memenangkan berbagai penghargaan sastra bergengsi di Jepang, seperti Hadiah Akutagawa, dan Penghargaan Tanizaki. Buku-buku ceritanya banyak diterjemahkan. Di antaranya yang memikat seperti novel The Memory Police dan The Housekeeper and The Professor.

Asrama

Roman

Der Duft von Eis

Hiromi Kawakami

Yuko Tsushima

Kono Taeko

Selamat Datang di Museum Penyiksaan

"A polícia da memória", finalista do International Booker Prize 2020 e do National Book Awards 2019, foi traduzido em diversos idiomas e, mais uma vez, marca o talento da escritora contemporânea Yoko Ogawa. Neste romance que chega agora ao Brasil, pela Estação Liberdade, em prosa ao mesmo tempo insólita e sensível, o leitor é conduzido ao mundo das memórias perdidas. Uma ilha é vigiada pela “polícia secreta”, que busca e elimina vestígios de lembranças. Objetos, espécies e até famílias inteiras somem sem deixar traços, sem que as pessoas sequer se atentem, ou percebam os desaparecimentos, pois as recordações furtivamente também já se foram. Na trama, uma escritora tenta manter intactos resquícios de histórias, de algo que possa permanecer. Não é fácil, já que tudo ao redor desaparece, e ela não pode contar sequer com a própria memória. O leitor é convidado, instintivamente, a acessar o seu próprio arcabouço de lembranças e percorre uma jornada de recordações que também gostaria de preservar. Algo que tem se tornado familiar na atualidade, e a todos que têm criado um novo mundo, já que o anterior, pré-pandemia, não mais existe, e nunca será como antes. Acessar as memórias é acessar, também, o que criamos e o que se mistura ao real. E ler A polícia da memória é embarcar no mais profundo do ser. Há uma pergunta que circunda toda a narrativa: se pudesse, o que você preservaria intacto, e não perderia da memória?

A Polícia da memória

L'isola dei senzamemoria

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent by her mother to live for a year with her aunt and uncle. It is a year which will change her life. The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle's big colonial mansion hides many secrets. It also has an unusual occupant in Pochiko, a Pygmy hippopotamus who is the last survivor from a time when the extensive gardens housed a zoo. But it is Tomoko's growing friendship with her cousin Mina which has the most profound effect on her time with the family. As the two girls share confidences and enthusiasms, encounter heartache and have their eyes opened to the workings of the adult world, they build an enduring bond which will change both of them.

A tale of friendship and family secrets in 1970s Japan from the International Booker Prize nominated author

De förlorade minnenas ö

Die siebzehnjährige Mari führt zusammen mit ihrer Mutter ein bescheidenes Hotel in einem Badeort an der Küste. Eines Abends wird sie Zeuge eines heftigen Streits zwischen zwei Gästen, einem älteren Herrn und einer Prostituierten. Mari ist tief beeindruckt von der Würde und der Eleganz des Mannes, dem seine Begleiterin abartige sexuelle Neigungen vorhält. Als sie den Mann einige Tage später in der Stadt wiedersieht, macht sie seine Bekanntschaft und folgt ihm auf eine unbewohnte Insel, auf der er zurückgezogen lebt. Seit Jahren arbeitet er dort an der Übersetzung eines russischen Romans, dessen Heldin ein gewaltsames Ende findet, genau wie seine eigene Frau Jahre zuvor ...

Hotel Iris

Une mère demande à ses enfants d'oublier leur prénom. Ils doivent, dit-elle, ne plus jamais le prononcer ni même y penser, mais en choisir un autre afin d'échapper au danger qui menace leur vie. Dans une villa ayant appartenu à leur père, au milieu d'un vaste jardin cerné de hauts murs, les trois enfants vont passer un temps infini, enfermés, coupés du monde mais heureux. Leurs nouveaux prénoms sont issus d'une encyclopédie des sciences : des noms de pierres choisis au hasard - prénoms sous le signe desquels ils reconstruisent leur identité. Arbres immenses, ruisseau ténu et chants d'oiseaux : les saisons passent, les vêtements cousus par leur mère sont trop petits, les ailes de coton et de laine qu'elle a fixées dans leur dos ne les gênent pas. Opale, Ambre et Agate grandissent en harmonie mais la dissonance vient de l'extérieur, un colporteur entre dans le jardin.

Yoko Ogawa

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