Carte

He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care of him. Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.

Ogata Shingo is growing old, and his memory is failing him. At night he hears only the sound of death in the distant rumble from the mountain. The relationships which have previously defined his life - with his son, his wife, and his attractive daughter-in-law - are dissolving, and Shingo is caught between love and destruction. Lyrical and precise, The Sound of the Mountain explores in immaculately crafted prose the changing roles of love and the truth we face in ageing.

Atinsă de o boală ciudată, frumoasa Ineko ajunge în azilul psihiatric din Ikuta, iar celor dragi, mamei și iubitului ei, nu le rămâne decât să trăiască tortura de a nu ști dacă au acționat spre binele tinerei. Va putea dragostea lui Hisano să o salveze de consecințele traumei care i-a afectat spiritul? Kawabata, recunoscut drept marele scriitor al clar-obscurului, l-a lăsat pe cititor să-și ofere singur un răspuns.