The Book of Form and Emptiness (Paperback)

'This compassionate novel of life, love and loss glows in the dark. Its strange, beautiful pages turn themselves. If you've lost your way with fiction over the last year or two, let The Book of Form and Emptiness light your way home' - David Mitchell

'The Book of Form and Emptiness is a big, polyphonic, often comic, magical-realist collage of a novel that attempts to interrogate the most pressing issues of the age ... at its heart is a compelling story of human connection and the redemptive power of art ... Ozeki is a talented storyteller' - The Guardian

'Heart-breaking and heart-healing - a book to not only keep us absorbed but also to help us think and love and live and listen. No one writes quite like Ruth Ozeki and The Book of Form and Emptiness is a triumph.' - Matt Haig

'There's powerful magic here ... Ozeki is unusually patient with her characters, even the rebarbative ones, and she is able to record the subtle peculiarities of other classes of beings that more overeager writers would probably miss ... Ozeki gives us a metaphor for our very own American consumption disorder, our love-hate relationship with the stuff we produce and can't let go of' - The New York Times Book Review

'This is both an extremely vivid picture of a small family enduring unimaginable loss, and a very powerful meditation on the way books can contain the chaos of the world and give it meaning and order. Annabelle and Benny Oh try to stay afloat in a sea of things, news, substances, technological soullessness and psychiatric quagmires, and the way they learn to live and breathe and even swim through it all feels like the struggle we all face. The Book of Form and Emptiness builds on the themes of A Tale for the Time Being, and ratifies Ozeki as one of our era's most compassionate and original minds' - Dave Eggers

'Once again, Ozeki has created a masterpiece. Her generous heart, remarkable imagination and brilliant mind light up every page' - Karen Joy Fowler

'Storytelling rarely comes more capacious than Ruth Ozeki's latest novel ... Ozeki interconnects zen philosophy, the environmental crisis, a critique of our mass consumer lifestyle and a playful post-modern sensibility - one of the characters is a talking book - within a novel that, for all its wide-ranging intellectual restlessness, remains grounded in its characters' emotional reality' - The Daily Mail

'Moving ... Ozeki has considerable storytelling energies' - The Financial Times

'Ozeki's prose is warm and welcoming, but as you turn the pages you'll see that she carries her pen to dark places. Her characters ask What is a self, what should we hold onto, what to do when the whole world hurts? And yet even in this darkness, she finds hope. Ozeki reminds me of a literary bower bird, taking interesting things from across traditions and continents, all to make this intricate nest for us, her readers' - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

'This is a novel that manages to be deeply profound about human connection, but does so with the lightest of touches' - Big Issue

Praise for A Tale for the Time Being:

'This is one of the most deeply moving and thought-provoking novels I have read in a long time. In precise and luminous prose, Ozeki captures both the sweep and detail of our shared humanity, moving seamlessly between Nao's story and our own' - Madeline Miller

'A triumph . . . Ozeki explores what it means to be human in this moment, right now (Nao). Her novel is saturated with love, ideas and compassion. In short, an absolute treat' - Sunday Times

'A Tale for the Time Being is a timeless story. Ruth Ozeki beautifully renders not only the devastation of the collision between man and the natural world, but also the often miraculous results of it. She is a deeply intelligent and humane writer who offers her insights with a grace that beguiles. I truly love this novel' - Alice Sebold

'Ingenious and touching, A Tale for the Time Being is also highly readable. And interesting: the contrast of cultures is especially well done' - Philip Pullman

'A beautifully interwoven novel about magic and loss and the incomprehensible threads that connect our lives. I just finished it, and loved it' - Elizabeth Gilbert

'Funny, heartbreaking, moving and profound . . . The warmth, compassion, wisdom and insight with which Ozeki pieces all these stories together will have the reader linked in a similarly profound way to this fantastic novel' - Independent

'A Tale for the Time Being is equal parts mystery and meditation. The mystery is a compulsive, gritty page-turner. The meditation - on time and memory, on the oceanic movement of history, on impermanence and uncertainty, but also resilience and bravery - is deep and gorgeous and wise. A completely satisfying, continually surprising, wholly remarkable achievement, this is a book to be read and reread' - Karen Joy Fowler

'A huge, compassionate and cleverly wrought novel' - Times Literary Supplement

'Packed with philosophical asides about time, and is unexpectedly moving' - The Times