Vulture: Ruth Ozeki, Amplifier - Her latest novel teems with voices, most of them belonging to what she might call "nonhuman persons."

The “emptiness” in the new book’s title is not nihilism or despair. It’s tied to the Buddhist teaching that the isolated, independent self is a fiction. Ozeki, who became a Buddhist after her father died and a priest in 2010, describes Zen ideas of selfhood this way: ‘Imagine the ocean and then this little wave, you know, sort of pops up and looks around and it’s like, Whoa, look at me! I’m a self; I’m a wave; this is fantastic. There’s this ocean around me, but I am a wave. And then suddenly, the next thing you know, the wave is just part of the ocean again.’
— Helen Shaw