A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki

“Atime 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.

露丝·尾关 Ruth Ozeki：当代美国文坛一位备受瞩目的作家,生于康涅狄格州纽黑文市,父亲是美国人,母亲是日本人。毕业于史密斯学院,并前往奈良大学进行了日本古典文学的研究。在日本期间,她还钻研了插花、能剧和面具雕刻。

从小说处女作《食肉之年》（My Year of Meats）开始,就引起了广泛的国际关注,获得《纽约时报》年度好书、桐山环太平洋图书奖、巴尼斯和诺布尔美国图书奖。第二部小说《大千世界》（All Over Creation ）被翻译为11种语言,并获得前哥伦布基金会美国图书奖、薇拉文学奖。《不存在的女孩》（A Tale for the Time Being）是她最受赞誉的一部新作,不仅入围布克奖、都柏林文学奖等,收获美国图书馆协会最佳小说奖、国家书评人奖等欧美数十个重量级文学奖的肯定,并在世界30余个国家出版。

同时,她还是一名电影制片人和禅宗修行者。其自传电影《分骨》（Halving the Bones）,讲述了她将祖母的遗骨从日本带回家的旅程,曾在圣丹斯电影节、纽约现代艺术博物馆、蒙特利尔电影节中上映。她所拥有的跨越东西方的独特视角,被评价为“使人们领略到了美国文化中从未有人关注过的细节”。