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A Novel
by Madeleine Thien
A novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door.
Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.
Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina's illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family's tragic past.
As Lina confronts her father's troubling admissions, she begins to reconceptualize the world around her, gaining a deeper understanding of how our individual futures are shaped by our political circumstances, and she relies on the collective joy of art and intellectual endeavors to carry her through difficulty. A novel that voyages between centuries, generations, and ideas, The Book of Records is an indelible testament to the migratory nature of humanity and our ceaseless search for a home―in the physical world, in cyberspace, in history, and in the imagination―in the wake of catastrophe.
Barak Obama's 2025 Summer Reading List
1m Since someone mentioned it, https://barackobama.medium.com/my-2025-summer-reading-list-bb25331e761b here you go : • Mark Twain — Ron Chernow A comprehensive biography of one of the most important writers and social commentators in American history. • The Book of Records — Madeleine Thien A bea...
-kim.kovacs
"Thien hints intriguingly at deeper themes of grief and interconnection, but they're left underdeveloped. There's much here to admire, but it doesn't quite hang together." —Publishers Weekly
"To say that Thien's novel is relevant to most contemporary audiences is inadequate; it would resonate with readers of any era. This philosophical work might best be savored in short bursts. Like a visiting a vast museum, to take everything in at once is to have too much information to absorb fully." —Library Journal
"Rich, ambitious, and utterly engrossing, The Book of Records is at once a Borgesian meditation on Time's overlapping folds, and a complex, moving feat of human storytelling. Madeleine Thien is an extraordinary novelist." ―Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History
"Light radiates from every stunning sentence in this beautiful new novel by Madeleine Thien... . Transporting, gripping, and tender, The Book of Records has come to us at a moment when we need it most." ―Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, finalist for the Booker Prize
"I loved The Book of Records; it broke my heart, and held me together." ―Moriel Rothman-Zecher, author of Before All the World
This information about The Book of Records was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, including Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Montreal.
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