The Book of Records

Reviews

"Madeleine Thien’s time-warping historical novel The Book of Records collapses centuries and geographies in an ambitious family saga.... In an aching, dreamlike narrative that overlaps distant centuries and geographies to chart cycles of authoritarianism and loss…This staggering novel blurs the line between factand fiction to underscore the importance of storytelling itself, as a practice of endurance, and resistance.... Try to read without weeping profusely." — The New York Times

"Deeply humane …. In an aching, dreamlike narrative that overlaps distant centuries and geographies to chart cycles of authoritarianism and loss, Thien uncovers glimmers of community among disparate individuals .... With her imagined worlds, incandescent prose and malleable sense of time and history, Thien strikes worthy comparisons to Italo Calvino, Walter Benjamin, Gaston Bachelard and Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. This staggering novel blurs the line between fact and fiction to underscore the importance of storytelling itself, as a practice of endurance, and resistance .... Try to read without weeping profusely." — New York Times Book Review

"[An] ambitious, elliptical novel …. A poignant meditation on loss and its many meanings, grief an endless loop like an Escher drawing .... The Book of Records is both a dystopian fantasy ... and an ode to a planet in crisis." — The Washington Post

"Rapturous …. The Book of Records is a rich and beautiful novel. It’s serious but playful; a study of limbo and stasis that nonetheless speaks of great movement and change." — The Guardian

"Thien writes beautifully about the lives of these thinkers, and their tales of escape from political or religious oppression end up melding with Lina’s own story….With The Sea, Thien literalizes a state of mind, the in-betweenness that comes before one makes a major decision. The stories Lina absorbs in that out-of-time place all ask whether to risk your family or your life on behalf of an ideal—whether it’s worth sacrificing yourself for another, better world you can’t yet see." — Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic

"Thien plunges the reader into thrilling, perilous leaps back and forth across time. … Thien’s inhabiting of these different timescales is a marvel of research and imagination… Thein’s dazzling historical somersault doubles as a plea for humanity." — Catherine Taylor, Financial Times