Author: Ruth Ozeki

Nominated By: Pat Grimes

fiction

Review From: New York Times

On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach. Tucked inside is the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao Yasutani. Ruth--a writer who finds the lunchbox--suspects that it is debris from Japan's 2011 tsunami. Once she begins to read the diary, Ruth quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of Nao's fate. Meanwhile in Tokoyo, Nao, uprooted from her home in the U.S., bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster, has decided to end her life. But first, she wants to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun, in the pages of her secret diary . . .

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 . . . As emotionally engaging as it is intellectually provocative."
Washington Post

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

While Ozeki is unflinching about life's brutalities, she is also a deeply uplifting writer. She is tender and playful and constantly puzzles over life's conundrums--not least the act of literary creation itself . . .Her novel is saturated with love, ideas, and compassion. It is, in short, an absolute treat.
The Sunday Times (London)




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