{"product_id":"minas-matchbox-9780593316085","title":"Mina's Matchbox","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTHE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW \u003c\/i\u003eEDITORS' CHOICE - A \u003ci\u003eTIME\u003c\/i\u003e BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of \u003ci\u003eThe Memory Police\u003c\/i\u003e, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"A story of first enchantments and last gasps...Effervescent.\" --\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read \u003ci\u003eMina's Matchbox\u003c\/i\u003e like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.\" --Ruth Ozeki, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Form and Emptiness\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 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 great-aunt, 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand--her uncle's mysterious absences, her great-aunt's experience of the Second World War, her aunt's misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, \u003ci\u003eMina's Matchbox \u003c\/i\u003eis an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time--and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eYOKO OGAWA\u003c\/b\u003e has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, A Public Space, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Zoetrope: All-Story\u003c\/i\u003e. Her works include \u003ci\u003eThe Memory Police, The Diving Pool, \u003c\/i\u003ea collection of three novellas;\u003ci\u003e The Housekeeper and the Professor; Hotel Iris;\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eRevenge.\u003c\/i\u003e She lives in Ashiya, Japan.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Pantheon Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50875036762386,"sku":"9780593316085","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_45fec2e6-09f3-4931-bf45-7056cc4be9ad.jpg?v=1738015076","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/minas-matchbox-9780593316085","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}