Ruth Ozeki Books

Jane Takagi-Little produces a Japanese television show on all-American meat cooking. Akiko Ueno learns more than just recipes from Jane's programmes. In one parallel year, the lives of two women at opposite ends of the earth are brought together in a novel of meat, TV and personal crisis.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house - a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, he falls in love with a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book - a talking thing - who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter. The Book of Form and Emptiness blends unforgettable characters, riveting plot and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz to climate change to our attachment to material possessions. This is classic Ruth Ozeki - bold, humane and heartbreaking.

A revelatory short memoir from the author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki about how her face has shaped and been shaped by her life

With a lifetime of careful nurturing of potatoes and seeds behind them, Lloyd Fuller and his Japanese wife, Momoko, have begun to feel the ravages of time. Their only daughter, Yumi, left home twenty-five years ago, and now they must attempt to consider the future of their precious yet fragile livelihood. Meanwhile a troupe of young revolutionaries are scouring the land in their faithful Winnebego, their eccentric, volatile lives focused on restoring farming practice to its basic beginnings and curbing genetic modification once and for all. As the 'Seeds of Resistance' come crashing into Fullers Farms so too does Yumi return to the fold, and the lives of Lloyd and Momoko are certain never to be the same again.