The Book of Records

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 have arrived 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. Under the tutelage of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to face her ailing father’s troubling admissions about his role in their family’s tragic past. Lina’s encounters with her intellectual and personal forebearers force her to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption.

Profound, exquisitely written and with extraordinary subtlety of thought, The Book of Records explores the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity, our search for home, and the place of faith and humanity in our world.