Synopsis
A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki
"A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be."
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace—and it will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao's drama and unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Full of Ozeki's signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.
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Review
'A Tale for the Time Being is a timeless story. Ruth Ozeki beautifully renders not only the devastation of the collision between man and the natural world, but also the often miraculous results of it. She is a deeply intelligent and humane writer who offers her insights with a grace that beguiles. I truly love this novel' Alice Sebold author of The Lovely Bones
'A Tale for the Time Being is equal parts mystery and meditation. The mystery is a compulsive, gritty page-turner. The meditation - on time and memory, on the oceanic movement of history, on impermanence and uncertainty, but also resilience and bravery - is deep and gorgeous and wise. A completely satisfying, continually surprising, wholly remarkable achievement, this is a book to be read and reread' Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club
'There is far too much to say about this remarkable and ambitious book in a few sentences. This is for real and not just another hyped-up blurb. A Tale for the Time Being is a great achievement, and it is the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Ruth Ozeki has not only reinvigorated the novel itself, the form, but she's given us the tried and true, deep and essential pleasure of characters who we love and who matter' Jane Hamilton author of A Map of the World
'Hooray - Ozeki rides again!' Barbara Kingsolver on All Over Creation
'Ozeki joins the constellation of such writers as Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Proulx and Margaret Atwood, bringing her own shrewd and playful humour and kinetic pizzazz to the table' Chicago Tribune on All Over Creation
'There are not many novels that can justify the label "extraordinary", as this one claims to be. Nonetheless, this is extraordinary for several reasons. It grapples with a quite astonishing pantheon of themes. The writing is witty, intelligent and passionate, inching between comment and emotional involvement without once losing its foothold. This is a disturbing, humorous and intelligent book' --Independent On My Year Of Meats
Book Description
'Bewitching, intelligent and heartbreaking' Junot Díaz
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