Mina's Matchbox cover art

Mina's Matchbox

A spellbinding Japanese tale of friendship and family secrets

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars.

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.

The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Praise for Mina's Matchbox

'I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.' RUTH OZEKI, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

'Dreamy and whimsical, Mina’s Matchbox traffics in the themes at which Ogawa always excels: memory, identity, and nostalgia' Esquire, Best Books of the Summer

'A conspicuously gifted writer. . . To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state. . . She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance' Guardian

©2024 Yoko Ogawa (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Coming of Age Family Life Friendship Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature

Critic reviews

[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
A conspicuously gifted writer…To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state... She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance'
A transfixing coming of age tale set in early 1970s Japan. [Tomoko] uncovers a host of secrets that force her to question her family’s complicated history
Dreamy and whimsical, Mina’s Matchbox traffics in the themes at which Ogawa always excels: memory, identity, and nostalgia
This elegant, unusual novel full of eccentric personages is a Wes Anderson movie waiting to happen
Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.
One of Japan’s most acclaimed authors
Ogawa, an award-winning novelist both in her native Japan and in the United States, writes with exquisite artistry about the complications of a close-knit household whose members are quietly protective of its wounding secrets, as seen through the eyes of a young girl; the novel is beautifully translated by Snyder
If you loved The Memory Police, you’ll be excited for Ogawa’s “hypnotic, introspective novel” ... Tomoko and her cousin Mina decipher the world around them: the family’s strange dynamics, her uncle’s absences, her aunt’s misery, and her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, in a coming-of-age story that’s sure to be transformative
This engaging bildungsroman explores the friendship and mutual curiosity between two extraordinary young people...Facing complicated themes with deceptively simple language...A charming yet guileless exploration of childhood’s ephemeral pleasures and reflexive poignancy.
All stars
Most relevant
It was a very enjoyable book. Full of tenderness and nostalgia. One I am sure I will revisit later on.

A sweet memory of things gone.

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Great storytelling. You get completely wrapped in details. Japanese really know how to tell stories.

Great details

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