A Tale for the Time Being

“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.”

A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki — shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

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.

“An exquisite novel: funny, tragic, hard-edged and ethereal at once.”

— David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“Ozeki takes on big themes . . . 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 profound affection for her characters makes A Tale for the Time Being as emotionally engaging as it is intellectually provocative.”

— The Washington Post

“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

PRINT Awards

Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award for Foreign Literature, Leo Tolstoy Museum & Estate, 2015
International IMPAC Dublin Award (longlist), 2015
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, 2013
Man Booker Prize (shortlist), 2013
National Book Critics Circle Award (finalist), 2014
John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, 2014
Medici Book Club Prize, 2014
Kitschies Red Tentacle Prize (UK), 2013
Association for Asian American Studies, Creative Writing: Prose Book Award, 2015
Canada-Japan Literary Award, 2014
New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, 2013
Washington Post Notable Book for Fiction, 2013
Salon Magazine Best Book Award, 2013
Independent Booksellers Book Award (UK), 2013
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, 2014
PEN Open Book Award (longlist), 2014
ALA Notabe Book for Adult Fiction, 2014
Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, 2014
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, 2014
BookPage Best Book, 2013
Booklist Editors' Choice, 2013
ABA Indies Choice Book Award (honoree), 2014
Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction (nominee), 2013
Le Prix Littéraire des Lycéennes (Elle Magazine, France), 2014