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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

THE FACE: A TIME CODE

Ruth Ozeki

A FASCINATING MEMOIR THAT EXPLORES RACE, POLITICS, AND AGING

A PROLIFIC, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

A UNIQUE MEDITATION ON THE PASSAGE OF TIME FROM A ZEN BUDDHIST PRIEST
A revelatory treatise from the Booker-shortlisted author of A Tale for the Time Being about how her face has shaped and been shaped by her life

What did your face look like before your parents were born? In The Face: A Time Code, bestselling author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki recounts, in moment-to-moment detail, a profound encounter with memory and the mirror. According to ancient Zen tradition, “your face before your parents were born” is your true face. Who are you? What is your true self? What is your identity before or beyond the dualistic distinctions, like father/mother and good/evil, that define us?

With these questions in mind, Ozeki challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording her thoughts, and noticing every possible detail. Those solitary hours open up a lifetime's worth of meditations on race, aging, family, death, the body, self doubt, and, finally, acceptance. In this lyrical short memoir, Ozeki calls on her experience of growing up in the wake of World War II as a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian American; of having a public face as an author; of studying the intricate art of the Japanese Noh mask; of being ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest; and of her own and her parents' aging, to paint a rich and utterly unique portrait of a life as told through a face.

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Her first two novels, My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), have been translated into 11 languages and published in fourteen countries. Her most recent work, A Tale for the Time-Being (2013), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been published in over thirty countries. She lives in British Columbia and New York City.

“Strange in the best sense, plus funny, moving and deeply wise”
san Francisco Chronicle

”The Face, as with the best of literary nonfiction, incorporates elements of memoir and essay, conjecture and meditation, allowing the reader to accompany each author as [she] creates a text that is utterly unique and universally affecting funny, sad and profound”
los Angeles Review Of Books

“Throughout Ozeki's essay her refreshing and cultivated wisdom leads us through the mind of a compassionate, grounded human and a writer of real integrity”
electric Literature
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Published 2016-03-01 by Restless Books

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