National Bestseller

"Beautifully written and delightfully strange--. As earthy as it is sublime, For the Time Being is, in the truest sense, an eye- opener."-- Daily News

From Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and one of the most compelling writers of our time, comes For the Time Being , her most profound narrative to date. With her keen eye, penchant for paradox, and yearning for truth, Dillard renews our ability to discover wonder in life's smallest--and often darkest--corners.

Why do we exist? Where did we come from? How can one person matter? Dillard searches for answers in a powerful array of images: pictures of bird-headed dwarfs in the standard reference of human birth defects; ten thousand terra-cotta figures fashioned for a Chinese emperor in place of the human court that might have followed him into death; the paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin crossing the Gobi Desert; the dizzying variety of clouds. Vivid, eloquent, haunting, For the Time Being evokes no less than the terrifying grandeur of all that remains tantalizingly and troublingly beyond our understanding.

"Stimulating, humbling, original--. [Dillard] illuminate[s] the human perspective of the world, past, present and future, and the individual's relatively inconsequential but ever so unique place in it."-- Rocky Mountain News

安妮·迪拉德 Annie Dillard,作家、诗人、博物学者、语言大师。1945年出生于美国宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡一个富裕的家庭,自幼喜好阅读,在父母影响下,从钢琴、绘画与舞蹈课,到采集岩石与昆虫,她的童年交织着无穷的创造力与对环境的探索。1968年,她以题为《瓦尔登湖 与梭罗》的论文毕业于弗吉尼亚霍林斯大学,奠定一生的写作方向。

1971年,在经历了一场几乎致命的肺炎之后,迪拉德在弗吉尼亚州的听客溪生活了一年,深入体验生命。这一经历成就了《听客溪的朝圣》(Pilgrim At Tinker Creek,又译为溪畔天问),这本书使她在二十九岁便获得普利策奖,在美国文坛激起巨大的回响,影响力至今不衰。

迪拉德著述颇丰,是《The Atlantic》《Harpers》等杂志的专栏作家,其作品体裁涉及散文、诗歌、小说和书信,皆直指生命的核心。作品有《现世》 《教顽石说话》 《神圣的坚实》 《文字生涯》《与中国作家相会》《美国童年》等。爱德华·艾比(Edward Abbey) 认为她是梭罗的“真正传人”。