[The Face 01] • The Face · A Time Code (Kindle Single)

A groundbreaking new series from Restless Books: In original essays, a diverse group of writers will take readers on a guided tour of that most intimate terrain: their own faces.

Our inspiration for The Face comes from a passage by Jorge Luis Borges: “As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.” What stories does a face tell? A face has a social history: it tells of lineage and belonging. It exists is relation to other faces past and future. Our faces are constant but evolving companions. They are certainly not the faces we are born with, and we don't know which face we will be wearing when we die. A face accumulates signs of wear and betrays our habits of living. Above all, our faces are our most distinctive signatures; flesh-and-blood emblems of the identities we carry around invisibly.

“Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists….bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page.”

—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of This Is How You Lose Her

“I’ve long been an admirer of Ruth Ozeki’s work….A writer at the height of her powers….Ruth Ozeki is a writer of great passion and purpose. She fearlessly tackles big issues, stirs up revolutions, and unveils truths with keen insight and humor that touches our hearts and opens our minds."

—Gail Tsukiyama, bestselling author of The Samurai’s Garden

“Ozeki joins the constellation of such environmentally aware writers as Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Proulx, and Margaret Atwood.”

—Chicago Tribune

“A careful, considerate writer.”

—Booklist

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 14 countries. Her most recent work, A Tale for the Time-Being (2013), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and will be published in over thirty countries. Ruth's documentary and dramatic independent films, including Halving the Bones, have been shown on PBS, at the Sundance Film Festival, and at colleges and universities across the country.

A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth ordained in 2010 and is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. She lives in British Columbia and New York City.