A Tale for the Time Being

　　倫敦書展重點小說，睽違十餘年，《食肉之年》暢銷作家再度展現豐沛寫作能量！

　　16歲的東京女孩Nao飽受被同學霸凌以及孤立的痛苦，一心只想趕快離開這個世界。但在結束生命前，她還必須為已是人瑞的曾祖母留下傳記。Nao每天透過日記寫下內心的感受，這是她的情緒出口，也是讓她感覺仍然活著的唯一寄託。

　　大西洋的彼岸，小說家Ruth某日在海邊撿到一個Hello Kitty午餐盒，很有可能是2011年日本東北地震海嘯打過來的。當她讀完盒子裡面日本女孩Nao的日記後，彷彿也被捲入她的過去與未來。Nao後來到底有沒有完成那本傳記？她還在人世嗎？還是……

　　Ruth Ozeki以其特有的幽默手法，巧妙編寫出一個跨越寫作者與讀者之間、過去與未來之間、真實與虛構之間的故事，吊足讀者胃口的同時，也讓這本小說深入人心。（文/博客來編譯）

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

　　“A time 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.