Tale for the Time Being

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 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 a 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 humour 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.

In Tokyo, Nao, in varsta de saisprezece ani, a decis ca exista o singura scapare de singuratatea ei dureroasa si de agresiunea colegilor sai, dar inainte de a termina totul, Nao intentioneaza sa documenteze viata strabunicii ei, o calugarita budista care a trait mai mult mai mult de un secol. Un jurnal este singura consolare a lui Nao - si va atinge vietile intr-un mod pe care abia si-l poate imagina. In Pacific, o intalnim pe Ruth, o romanciera care traieste pe o insula indepartata, care descopera o colectie de artefacte spalate la uscat intr-o cutie de pranz Hello Kitty - posibil resturi de la devastatorul tsunami din 2011.