The Book of Form and Emptiness
In the beginning
A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake…
From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of A Tale for the Time Being, a brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up and our relationship with things.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
“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.”
After the death of his father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices, voices that belong to the things in his house — a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Benny doesn’t understand what the things are saying, but he senses their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, others are snide or angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices begin crowding in on him.
With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki — bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
“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.”
“When a book and a reader are meant for each other, both of them know it.”
About Ruth
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of three novels, My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize and has been translated into 28 languages.
Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones.
She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she teaches creative writing at Smith College and is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.