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WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
When a book and a reader are meant for each other, both of them know it . . .
After the tragic death of his father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house and sound variously pleasant, angry or sad. Then his mother develops a hoarding problem, and the voices grow more clamorous. So Benny seeks refuge in the silence of a large public library. There he meets a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret; a homeless philosopher-poet; and his very own Book, who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.
Blending unforgettable characters with jazz, climate change and our attachment to material possessions, this is classic Ruth Ozeki - bold, humane and heartbreaking.
About the author
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the author of four novels including The Book of Form and Emptiness, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and translated into 28 languages. Ozeki has also written a short memoir, Timecode of a Face. She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she teaches creative writing at Smith College and is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.
ruthozeki.com
Summary
Winner of the Women's Prize, this is a brilliantly inventive novel about loss, growing up and our relationship with things
Foreword
Winner of the Women's Prize, this is a brilliantly inventive novel about loss, growing up and our relationship with things
Additional text
This is a novel that manages to be deeply profound about human connection, but does so with the lightest of touches
Report
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
