Ozeki's 2013 novel, "A Tale for the Time Being" (Viking Penguin) tells the story of a mysterious diary written by a troubled schoolgirl in Tokyo that's washed ashore on the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada in the wake of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The diary is discovered by a novelist named Ruth, who becomes obsessed with discovering the girl's fate. Junot Diaz called this novel Ozeki's "absolute best—bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page." The novel was awarded the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and named the first recipient of the 2015 Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award (founded by the Leo Tolstoy Museum & Estate and Samsung Electronics) for the Best Foreign Novel of the 21st century. The book has received several other national and international awards, and has been published in over thirty countries.