Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of three novels, My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones. She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.
“An exquisite novel: funny, tragic, hard-edged and ethereal at
once.”
—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
“As contemporary as a Japanese teenager’s slang but as ageless as a
Zen koan, Ruth Ozeki’s new novel combines great storytelling with a
probing investigation into the purpose of existence. . . . She
plunges us into a tantalizing narration that brandishes mysteries
to be solved and ideas to be explored. . . . Ozeki’s profound
affection for her characters makes A Tale for the Time Being as
emotionally engaging as it is intellectually provocative.”
—The Washington Post
“A delightful yet sometimes harrowing novel . . . Many of the
elements of Nao’s story—schoolgirl bullying, unemployed suicidal
‘salarymen,’ kamikaze pilots—are among a Western reader’s most
familiar images of Japan, but in Nao’s telling, refracted through
Ruth’s musings, they become fresh and immediate, occasionally
searingly painful. Ozeki takes on big themes . . . all drawn into
the stories of two ‘time beings,’ Ruth and Nao, whose own fates are
inextricably bound.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Ozeki's novel is a tale for any time . . . Metafiction and
parallel universes and climate change and Zen Buddhism—this book
has so much to appeal.”
—Matthew Salesses, The Week
“Sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nao Yasutani’s voice is the heart and
soul of this very satisfying book. . . . The contemporary Japanese
style and use of magical realism are reminiscent of author
Haruki Murakami.”
—USA Today
“A terrific novel full of breakthroughs both personal and literary.
. . . Ozeki revels in Tokyo teen culture—this goes far beyond Hello
Kitty—and explores quantum physics, military applications of
computer video games, Internet bullying, and Marcel Proust, all
while creating a vulnerable and unique voice for the
sixteen-year-old girl at its center. . . . Ozeki has produced a
dazzling and humorous work of literary origami. . . . Nao’s
voice—funny, profane and deep—is stirring and unforgettable as she
ponders the meaning of her life.”
—The Seattle Times
“Beautifully written, intensely readable and richly layered . . .
one of the best books of the year so far.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Masterfully woven . . . Entwining Japanese language with WWII
history, pop culture with Proust, Zen with quantum mechanics, Ozeki
alternates between the voices of two women to produce a
spellbinding tale.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“Forget the proverbial message in a bottle: This Tale fractures
clichés as it affirms the lifesaving power of words. . . . As Ozeki
explores the ties between reader and writer, she offers a lesson in
redemption that reinforces the pricelessness of the here and
now.”
—Elle
“A powerful yarn of fate and parallel lives.”
—Good Housekeeping
“Ozeki weaves together Nao’s adolescent yearnings with Ruth’s
contemplative digressions, adding bits of Zen wisdom, as well as
questions about agency, creativity, life, death, and human
connections along the way. A Tale for the Time Being is a dreamy,
spiritual investigation of how to gracefully meet the waves of
time, which, in the end, come for us all.”
—The Daily Beast
“As we read Nao’s story and the story of Ozeki’s reading of it, as
we go back and forth between the text and the notes, time expands
for us. It opens up onto something resembling narrative eternity .
. . page after page, slowly unfolding. And what a beautiful effect
that is for a novel to create.”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered
“Superb . . . her best and most adventurous novel to date . .
. likely to leave readers feeling its emotional impact for a long
time to come.”
—BookPage
“Magnificent . . . brings together a Japanese girl’s diary and a
transplanted American novelist to meditate on everything from
bullying to the nature of conscience and the meaning of life. . . .
The novel’s seamless web of language, metaphor, and meaning can’t
be disentangled from its powerful emotional impact: These are
characters we care for deeply, imparting vital life lessons through
the magic of storytelling. A masterpiece, pure and simple.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An intriguing, even beautiful narrative remarkable for its unusual
but attentively structured plot. . . . We go from one story line to
the other, back and forth across the Pacific, but the reader never
loses place or interest.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Ozeki’s absorbing novel is an extended meditation on writing,
time, and people in time. . . . The characters’ lives are finely
drawn, from Ruth’s rustic lifestyle to the Yasutani family’s
straitened existence after moving from Sunnyvale, California, to
Tokyo. Nao’s winsome voice contrasts with Ruth’s intellectual
ponderings to make up a lyrical disquisition on writing’s power to
transcend time and place. This tale from Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist
priest, is sure to please anyone who values a good story broadened
with intellectual vigor.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An extraordinary novel about a courageous young woman, riven by
loneliness, by time, and (ultimately) by tsunami. Nao is an
inspired narrator and her quest to tell her great grandmother’s
story, to connect with her past and with the larger world is both
aching and true. Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists and
here she is at her absolute best—bewitching, intelligent,
hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page.”
—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of This Is
How You Lose Her
“A beautifully interwoven novel about magic and loss and the
incomprehensible threads that connect our lives. I loved it.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love
“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 its often miraculous
results.”
—Alice Sebold, bestselling author of The Lovely Bones
“Ingenious and touching. . . . I read it with great pleasure.”
—Philip Pullman, award-winning author of The Golden Compass
“One of the most deeply moving and thought-provoking novels I have
read in a long time. In precise and luminous prose, Ozeki captures
both the sweep and detail of our shared humanity. The result is
gripping, fearless, inspiring and true.”
—Madeline Miller, author of the Orange Prize winner The Song of
Achilles
“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.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book
Club
“A great achievement, and 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 we love and who matter.”
—Jane Hamilton, bestselling author of A Map of the World
“Profoundly original, with authentic, touching characters and
grand, encompassing themes, Ruth Ozeki’s novel proves that truly
great stories—like this one—can both deepen our understanding of
self and remind us of our shared humanity.”
—Deborah Harkness, bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches and
Shadow of Night
“I’m late to the Ruth Ozeki party but now I’m dancing hard. A Tale
for the Time Being is a confrontational yet tender novel, the
narrative makes the reader work and stretch and think about the way
they tell their own stories. Each of its facets is perfectly cut—a
teenage girl in Japan, a writer in Canada, Buddhism, the oceans,
the inheritances we both keep and throw away—and the whole glimmers
and glitters. I’ve given away quite a few copies of a A Tale for
the Time Being over this pandemic; I think it creates a moment to
laugh or think or just exhale.”
—Nadifa Mohamed, author of The Fortune Men
“I’ve long been an admirer of Ruth Ozeki’s work, and her exquisite,
richly textured novel, A Tale for the Time Being, marks the
stunning return of a writer at the height of her powers. Seamlessly
weaving together tales of the past and present that are equally
magical and heartbreaking, she transports us to the worlds of Nao
and Jiko, in Japan, and Ruth, on a remote island in British
Columbia, where their worlds collide as they reach across time to
find the meaning of life and home. . . . A wise and
wonderfully inventive story that will resonate through time.”
—Gail Tsukiyama, bestselling author of The Samurai’s Garden
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