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(as of Apr 15, 2025 10:20:46 UTC – Details)
A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
Finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award
“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 first 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 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 her 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.
From the Publisher
Publisher : Penguin Books (December 31, 2013)
Language : English
Paperback : 448 pages
ISBN-10 : 0143124870
ISBN-13 : 978-0143124870
Reading age : 18 years and up
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 1.2 x 5.4 x 8.3 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book breathtaking with a fascinating story woven through multiple storylines, with one review noting how lives are intermingled in real events. They appreciate its thought-provoking nature, rich ideas, and great insight into Japanese culture, while enjoying the characters, particularly Nao. The writing and pacing receive mixed reactions – while some find it beautifully paced, others say it takes forever for anything to happen, and while some find it enjoyable once they get into it, others find it depressing.
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