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Before Your Memory Fades
The third novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, following four new customers in a cafe where customers can travel back in time.
On the hillside of Mount Hakodate in northern Japan, Cafe Donna Donna is fabled for its dazzling views of Hakodate port. But that’s not all. Like the charming Tokyo cafe Funiculi Funicula, Cafe Donna Donna offers its customers the extraordinary experience of travelling through time.
From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales from the Cafe comes another story of four new customers, each of whom is hoping to take advantage of the cafe's time-travelling offer. Among some familiar faces from Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s previous novels, readers will also be introduced to: a daughter who begrudges her deceased parents for leaving her orphaned, a comedian who aches for his beloved and their shared dreams, a younger sister whose grief has become all-consuming, a young man who realizes his love for his childhood friend too late.
Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot and featuring signature heart-warming characters and wistful storytelling, in Before Your Memory Fades, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?
Before Your Memory Fades
Before Your Memory Fades
Cozy Pairings
Voodoo is a rich and inviting fragrance built around the depth of freshly brewed coffee, softened with the natural sweetness of sugar cane. Warm and slightly indulgent, this scent blends bold, roasted notes with a smooth, lingering sweetness that feels both energizing and comforting. Subtle and atmospheric, it carries a hint of something more, adding a layer of intrigue that makes the fragrance feel warm, familiar, and just a little bit magical.
Why we chose this: In a small Tokyo café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years, four customers at a time are given the chance to travel back in time, for as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold. These are quiet, aching, deeply human stories about what we would say if we had one more chance, and what we carry when we do not. Voodoo carries the warm, roasted depth of a series where a single cup of coffee holds more meaning than most people will ever find in a lifetime, rich and sweet and alive with something that feels like the particular magic of a place that has been quietly changing people for generations. It is the candle for every book in this series. Light this candle before you sit down with one of these stories, and let the warmth fill the room like a café on a quiet afternoon, where the coffee is always exactly right and the time you have left to drink it is the only thing that matters.