Mina's Matchbox

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.

Report

[A] beautifully composed novel... [and] elegant translation... Ogawa has turned a deceptively simple account of a year spent with exotic relatives into something closer to a universal fable about the precarious wonder of growing up Financial Times

Product details

• Authors: Yoko Ogawa, Ogawa Yoko
• Assisted by: Stephen Snyder (Translation)
• Publisher: Harvill Secker
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.08.2024
• EAN: 9781787302778
• ISBN: 978-1-78730-277-8
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 216 mm x 20 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Japan, FICTION / Friendship, FICTION / Cultural Heritage, Fiction in translation, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, c 1970 to c 1979, FICTION / World Literature / Japan