Yōko Ogawa

Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored „An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics“ with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.A film in French, "L'Annulaire“ (The Ringfinger), directed by Diane Bertrand, starring Olga Kurylenko and Marc Barbé, was released in France in June 2005 and subsequently made the rounds of the international film festivals; the film, some of which is filmed in the Hamburg docks, is based in part on Ogawa's "Kusuriyubi no hyōhon“ (薬指の標本), translated into French as "L'Annulaire“ (by Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle who has translated numerous works by Ogawa, as well as works by Akira Yoshimura and by Ranpo Edogawa, into French).Kenzaburō Ōe has said, 'Yōko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.' The subtlety in part lies in the fact that Ogawa's characters often seem not to know why they are doing what they are doing. She works by accumulation of detail, a technique that is perhaps more successful in her shorter works; the slow pace of development in the longer works requires something of a deus ex machina to end them. The reader is presented with an acute description of what the protagonists, mostly but not always female, observe and feel and their somewhat alienated self-observations, some of which is a reflection of Japanese society and especially women's roles within in it. The tone of her works varies, across the works and sometimes within the longer works, from the surreal, through the grotesque and the--sometimes grotesquely--humorous, to the psychologically ambiguous and even disturbing.
Revenge

Revenge

Yōko Ogawa

Ukochane równanie profesora

Ukochane równanie profesora

Yōko Ogawa

Podziemie pamięci

Podziemie pamięci

Yōko Ogawa

Mina's Matchbox

Mina's Matchbox

Yōko Ogawa

Hotel Iris

Hotel Iris

Yōko Ogawa

The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

Yōko Ogawa

The Diving Pool

The Diving Pool

Yōko Ogawa

La fórmula preferida del profesor

Yōko Ogawa

Das Geheimnis der Eulerschen Formel

Das Geheimnis der Eulerschen Formel

Yōko Ogawa

Liebe am Papierrand

Liebe am Papierrand

Yōko Ogawa

A Polícia da Memória

A Polícia da Memória

Yōko Ogawa

L'isola dei senza memoria

Yōko Ogawa

Poliția Memoriei

Yōko Ogawa

El embarazo de mi hermana

El embarazo de mi hermana

Yōko Ogawa

Insel der verlorenen Erinnerung

Yōko Ogawa

とにかく散歩いたしましょう

とにかく散歩いたしましょう

Yōko Ogawa

Profesorul și menajera

Yōko Ogawa

Suspine tandre

Suspine tandre

Yōko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Yōko Ogawa

Amores al margen

Amores al margen

Yōko Ogawa

Petites boîtes

Yōko Ogawa

La Policía de la Memoria

La Policía de la Memoria

Yōko Ogawa

La niña que iba en hipopótamo a la escuela

La niña que iba en hipopótamo a la escuela

Yōko Ogawa

The Memory Police

The Memory Police

Yōko Ogawa