Please join us at 7 p.m. (PST) on Tuesday, September 16, when Another Look presents Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor, a surprising story about what it means to live in the present and about the curious equations that can create a family.
The hybrid event will take place in Stanford’s Levinthal Hall, Hall at the Stanford Humanities Center at 424 Santa Teresa Street on the Stanford campus.
According to author Kenzaburō Ōe, “Yōko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.”
The story: a brilliant math professor has a peculiar problem: ever since a traumatic head injury in a car accident in 1975, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. His brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes.
An astute young housekeeper is hired to care for him. Her 10-year-old son becomes intrigued by the mysteries of math and befriends him. And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son.
According to Pulitzer-winning author Junot Diaz, “It’s a story about love, which is quite different from a love story. It’s one of the most beautiful novels.”
We will be announcing panelists soon. Meanwhile, register on the link below for hybrid or in-person attendance (we welcome walk-ins, too, but encourage registrations, which allow us to plan).
https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OyCu1aR0RfKCvumamq-v3g
Tags: Yoko Ogawa