"This novel was originally published in Japan by Shinchosha under the title Hakase"--T.p. verso.

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem, ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him. Though he cannot hold memories for long, 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.