The Book of Records
A Novel
Published on 2. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-1-324-13070-3 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"A beautiful fable about migration, memory, and the struggle to recognize our common humanity." -- President Barack Obama "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." -- Xan Brooks - Guardian "Deeply humane.... 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." -- Lauren LeBlanc - New York Times Book Review "The Book of Records is both a dystopian fantasy...and an ode to a planet in crisis." -- Hamilton Cain - Washington Post "Thien plunges the reader into thrilling, perilous leaps back and forth across time.... A marvel of research and imagination.... Thien's dazzling historical somersault doubles as a plea for humanity." -- Catherine Taylor - Financial Times "[Madeleine] 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...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 - Atlantic "Madeleine Thien's inventive and ambitious fourth novel, The Book of Records, opens with maximum intrigue.... Fans of books like Mohsin Hamid's Exit West and Omar El Akkad's What Strange Paradise will find much to enjoy in the structure, tone, and concerns.... [O]ne can't help but admire the breadth of Thien's imagination." -- Leland Cheuk - Boston Globe "An imaginative work of historical fiction." -- New York Times "Thien's case for the search for home as a central tenet of our humanity makes this complex novel worthy of attention." -- BookPage "In the tradition of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land, Thien's new work almost seamlessly integrates literary, historical and science fiction." -- Bethanne Patrick - Los Angeles Times "A meditation on human migration and the role of fate in history, this is absolutely a must read." -- Literary Hub "Madeleine Thien's fourth novel, The Book of Records, is a rare thing: an ideas-driven historical novel deeply grounded in its characters' humanity.... The Book of Records is a smart, ethically rigorous novel exploring what it means to live through moments of historical crisis." -- Isle McElroy - Vulture "Intricate and dazzlingly expansive.... [T]his is a novel with as much to offer the heart as the mind." -- Hephzibah Anderson - Observer "Prismatic and dazzlingly unorthodox, the novel's ambition is apparent within its first pages, as Thien seeks to drill to the very core of the human condition.... [E]vocative and buoyant.... And yes, it is a page turner." -- Richie Assaly - Toronto Star "The Book of Records defies simple summation.... Despite the weighty philosophical and political themes that run throughout...the novel is propulsive, with the ideas acting like brushstrokes that form a rich and complete picture by the novel's end." -- Ben Sigurdson - Winnipeg Free Press "The novel moves effortlessly across time, raising questions about the nature of a good life and how to respond to catastrophic times.... [E]ach narrative strand contributes to a sense of lightness, a buoyancy in the face of rising waters that will feel necessary and timely to readers in today's uncertain climate." -- Sara Beth West - Shelf Awareness "Thien's finest. I'm in awe of her ability to construct such a rich, detailed world, so full of unforgettable characters and ideas and unexpected movements through time and lineage...It's stunning, a story to disappear into." -- Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This "Madeleine Thien has an expansive and searching mind.... [She] is a perfect companion for a voyage that takes us both inward and outward to a place that our minds have not been to." -- Yiyun Li, author of Wednesday's Child "The Book of Records is an immersive, mind-bending experience.... Thien's genius and mastery of her craft is on full display here." -- Weike Wang, author of Rental House "I am enthralled by this book and amazed. It is capacious. Something so small should not be able to hold so much. And it is beautiful-an elegy of death and remembrance, of forgetting and of life." -- James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science and Time Travel: A History "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 [for how] it broke my heart, and [for how it] held me together." -- Moriel Rothman-Zecher, author of Before All the World "A symphony of time, memory, and human resilience...compelling us to reflect on our shared histories and the silent sacrifices made by those who dared to dream beyond their circumstances." -- Xinran, author of The Book of Secrets "Both poetic and lucid, The Book of Records is exquisitely rich and ambitious, weaving a shapeshifting labyrinth of memories and loss. A much-needed book in times like these, it reminds us of the enduring light of humanity." -- Yan Ge, author of Elsewhere "Both deeply serious and delightfully playful, The Book of Records is a kaleidoscopic work, nourishing of both mind and soul, which travels seamlessly and skillfully through time and space with hallucinatory clarity." -- James Scudamore, author of English Monsters "[A] bold attempt to reach new ground in an already distinguished literary career...Challenging fiction that serious readers will find enriching and rewarding." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
299 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-324-13070-3 (9781324130703)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2025
W. W. Norton & Company
€26.99
Available for download
Person
Madeleine Thien is the author of five books, including The Book of Records, named one of Obama's Best Books of 2025 and 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.