The Book of Records

De: Madeleine Thien

Narrado por: Athena Karkanis, Richard Lam, Madeleine Thien, Jeff Yung, Scott Turner Schofield

A Literary Hub, Esquire, and Washington Post Most Anticipated Book of 2025

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.

“[A] bold attempt to reach new ground in an already distinguished literary career … Challenging fiction that serious readers will find enriching and rewarding.”—Kirkus (starred review)

©2025 Madeleine Thien (P)2025 Penguin Random House Canada Limited

The language is both brilliant and poetic

Loved everything about this book. It is now one of my favorites. The language is beautiful and the story is compelling.