Home › Literary Fiction › A Tale for the Time Being
A Tale for the Time Being book cover

A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

A novelist finds a girl’s diary washed up on a Canadian beach

2013Steady paceThoughtful

What it is about

Ruth finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox on a beach in British Columbia. Inside is the diary of Nao, a sixteen-year-old girl in Tokyo. As Ruth reads, she tries to find out what happened to the writer.

Who will enjoy it

Readers who like novels that mix modern life with ideas.

What you will get

It was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize.

A Tale for the Time Being Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting

Genre

Literary Fiction · Diary · Japan · Time

Length

432 pages · ≈ 12 h

More about this book

Characters

Ruth, Nao and Nao’s great-grandmother.

Setting

A British Columbia island and Tokyo.

What makes it different

A novel that moves between a diary and the reader’s present.

Feel

Funny, thoughtful and moving.

About Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki2 books on Tori BooksAmerican-Canadian novelist, born in 1956. The Book of Form and Emptiness won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2022.

Books Like A Tale for the Time Being

See “A Tale for the Time Being” on Amazon
See it on Amazon