The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 凍りついた香り [The Scent of Ice]. Ryoko is living with Hiroyuki, a perfumer. They had celebrated their first year together and he had made her a special scent. The best day he kills himself. Ryoko wants to know why and, with the help of his younger brother, Akira, whom she did not know existed, she investigates. She first learns that virtually everything he had told her about his life was untrue. She finds out that he was a first-class ice skater and, unknown to her, was still skating regularly. In particular she learns that he was a maths champion as a boy, regularly beating experienced mathematicians in contests. A key event was when he went to an international maths contest in Prague, as usual with his mother. Though she is still alive (contrary what he had told Ryoko) and obsessed with her eldest son’s achievements, Ryoko cannot find out why he dropped out of the contest. She heads off to Prague, expecting a Japanese-speaking guide and ends up with Jeniack who barely speaks English, let alone Japanese. Nevertheless he seems to steer her in the right direction as she finds secrets in an old monastery and a house where Mozart regularly visited. This seems to me to be the best of her novels I. have read but, sadly, has been translated into French, German and Chinese but not English.