{
    "id": 398537,
    "slug": "a-tale-for-the-time-being-ruth-ozeki",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "A Tale for the Time Being",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "<p>'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.'</p>\n<p>In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there&rsquo;s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates&rsquo; bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who&rsquo;s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao&rsquo;s only solace&mdash;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&mdash;possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami.</p>\n<p>As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao&rsquo;s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. Full of Ozeki&rsquo;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.</p>",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 422,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2013-02-21",
    "publication_date_latest": "2013-02-21",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [
        {
            "isbn": "9780857867971",
            "product_form": "BC"
        }
    ],
    "ratings_count": 0,
    "read_count": 0,
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    "rating_average": null,
    "ratings_distribution": {
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        "3": 0,
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        "5": 0
    },
    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:39:05+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-30T00:32:59+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4256,
        "slug": "canongate",
        "name": "Canongate",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:09:16+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:09:51+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [
        {
            "id": 244554,
            "slug": "ruth-l-ozeki-2",
            "key_names": "Ozeki",
            "names_before_key": "Ruth L.",
            "prefix_to_key": null,
            "contributor_role": "A01",
            "readable_contributor_role": "Author"
        }
    ],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [
        {
            "scheme_identifier": "32",
            "scheme_version": null,
            "main_subject": false,
            "subject_code": "301",
            "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:39:05+00:00",
            "updated_at": "2025-09-19T13:39:05+00:00"
        }
    ]
}