A Tale for the Time Being Audiobook

Quotes

• “As we read Nao’s story and the story of Ozeki’s reading of it, as we go back and forth between the text and the notes, time expands for us. It opens up onto something resembling narrative eternity…page after page, slowly unfolding. And what a beautiful effect that is for a novel to create.”

  — NPR’s All Things Considered (audio review)

• “For Ruth, Ozeki’s tone is slightly worried and obsessive as she reads the diary aloud to her husband. She lends a note of childishness and forced cheerfulness to Nao and her (literally) purple prose. The intoned prayers of gratitude from Nao’s great-grandmother, a feminist Buddhist nun, are genius. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.”

  — AudioFile

• “Forget the proverbial message in a bottle: This tale fractures clichés as it affirms the lifesaving power of words…[and] reinforces the pricelessness of the here and now.”

  — Elle

• “A powerful yarn of fate and parallel lives.”

  — Good Housekeeping

• “Masterfully woven…Entwining Japanese language with WWII history, pop culture with Proust, Zen with quantum mechanics, Ozeki alternates between the voices of two women to produce a spellbinding tale.”

  — O, The Oprah Magazine

• “An extraordinary novel…Nao is an inspired narrator and her quest to tell her great grandmother’s story, to connect with her past and with the larger world, is both aching and true. Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists and here she is at her absolute best—bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page.”

  — Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

• “A Tale for the Time Being is equal parts mystery and meditation. The mystery is a compulsive, gritty page-turner. The meditation—on time and memory, on the oceanic movement of history, on impermanence and uncertainty, but also resilience and bravery—is deep and gorgeous and wise. A completely satisfying, continually surprising, wholly remarkable achievement, this is a book to be read and reread.”

  — Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author

• “A Tale for the Time Being is a timeless story. Ruth Ozeki beautifully renders not only the devastation of the collision between man and the natural world but also the often miraculous results of it. She is a deeply intelligent and humane writer who offers her insights with a grace that beguiles. I truly love this novel.”

  — Alice Sebold, New York Times bestselling author 

• “There is far too much to say about this remarkable and ambitious book in a few sentences. This is for real and not just another hyped-up blurb. A Tale for the Time Being is a great achievement, and it is the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Ruth Ozeki has not only reinvigorated the novel itself, the form, but she’s given us the tried and true, deep, and essential pleasure of characters whom we love and who matter.”

  — Jane Hamilton, New York Times bestselling author

• “Profoundly original, with authentic, touching characters and grand, encompassing themes, Ruth Ozeki’s novel proves that truly great stories—like this one—can both deepen our understanding of self and remind us of our shared humanity.”

  — Deborah Harkness, New York Times bestselling author

• “Sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nao Yasutani’s voice is the heart and soul of this very satisfying book…The contemporary Japanese style and use of magical realism are reminiscent of author Haruki Murakami.”

  — USA Today

• “Delightful yet sometimes harrowing…Many of the elements of Nao’s story—schoolgirl bullying, unemployed suicidal ‘salarymen,’ kamikaze pilots—are among a Western reader’s most familiar images of Japan, but in Nao’s telling, refracted through Ruth’s musings, they become fresh and immediate, occasionally searingly painful.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “As contemporary as a Japanese teenager’s slang but as ageless as a Zen koan, Ruth Ozeki’s new novel combines great storytelling with a probing investigation into the purpose of existence…Ozeki’s profound affection for her characters, which warmed her earlier novels…makes A Tale for the Time Being as emotionally engaging as it is ­intellectually provocative.”

  — Washington Post

• “A terrific novel full of breakthroughs both personal and literary…Nao’s voice—funny, profane and deep—is stirring and unforgettable as she ponders the meaning of her life.”

  — Seattle Times

• “A Tale for the Time Being combines a fictional though fact-based version of Ozeki’s life with that of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl contemplating suicide in Tokyo…Ozeki leaves us at a moment in time where, as in quantum physics, there are no absolutes in terms of past, present, and future. Just Nao. And that’s such a pleasure.”

  — New York Daily News

• “Ozeki has shown herself to be a careful, considerate writer who obviously insists on writing what she wants to write and in the fashion she prefers. That special care and concern are also detectable in her latest novel, an intriguing, even beautiful narrative remarkable for its unusual but attentively structured plot…We go from one story line to the other, back and forth across the Pacific, but the reader never loses place or interest.”

  — Booklist (starred review)

• “Magnificent…The novel’s seamless web of language, metaphor, and meaning can’t be disentangled from its powerful emotional impact: these are characters we care for deeply, imparting vital life lessons through the magic of storytelling. A masterpiece, pure and simple.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• “Absorbing…The characters’ lives are finely drawn…Nao’s winsome voice contrasts with Ruth’s intellectual ponderings to make up a lyrical disquisition on writing’s power to transcend time and place. This tale from Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, is sure to please anyone who values a good story broadened with intellectual vigor.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “If you found a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore, containing an old diary, would it change your life? The answer in Ozeki’s tale is emphatically YES. There’s much weirdness and wonder in store in this new novel from the author of My Year of Meats.”

  — BookPage

• “Ingenious and touching…I read it with great pleasure.”

  — Philip Pullman, award–winning author of The Golden Compass

• “A wise and wonderfully inventive story that will resonate through time.”

  — Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Samurai’s Garden