A Tale for the Time Being

In the wake of the 2011 tsunami, Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home in British Columbia. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes, heartbreak and dreams of a young girl desperate for someone to understand her. Each turn of the page pulls Ruth deeper into the mystery of Nao's life, and forever changes her in a way neither could foresee. Weaving across continents and decades, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the author of four novels including The Book of Form and Emptiness, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and translated into 28 languages. Her nonfiction work includes the short memoir, Timecode of a Face, and the documentary film Halving the Bones. She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and lives in Western Massachusetts, where she taught creative writing at Smith College and is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor Emerita of Humanities. ruthozeki.com