The Book of Records

Named 2025's Most Anticipated Release by Toronto Star • Literary Hub • Esquire • The Washington Post • Esquire

One of Electric Literature's '48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025'.

The sublime, long-awaited, major new novel from the beloved author of the GG Award-winning, Booker Prize-shortlisted bestseller Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

In "The Sea," a sprawling, mysterious building-complex that endlessly receives migrants from everywhere and seems to exist somewhere outside of normal space and time, adolescent Lina cares for her ailing father. Having landed at The Sea with only what could be carried by hand, Lina grows up with nothing but a trio of books to read—three volumes in a series about the lives of famous "voyagers" of the past. Soon, however, she discovers three eccentric neighbours in the building who have stories of their own to share. These neighbours are Bento (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Baruch Spinoza), a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam who was excommunicated for his radical thought; Blucher (whose life mirrors Hannah Arendt), a philosopher whose academic promise in 1930s Germany became a quest to survive Nazi persecution; and Jupiter (or shades of Du Fu), a poet of Tang Dynasty China whose brilliance went unrecognised by the state, and whose dependence on fickle patrons barely sustained him while lesser artists thrived.

As she grows up in the building, Lina spends many hours listening to the fascinating tales of these friends. But it is only when she is finally told her father’s account of how the two of them came to reside in The Sea that she truly understands the unbearable cost of betrayal in her own life. And the combined force of these stories soon sets her on her own path into the unknown future.

An adventurous, voyaging novel in which time occupies space uniquely, The Book of Records holds a mirror to the idea of fate in history, interrogates questions of legacy, explores how the political factors of a collective moment may determine an individual's future, and beautifully shows the infinite joys of art and intellectual endeavour. This is the great novelist Madeleine Thien at her most remarkable, exciting, engrossing, and enriching.

MADELEINE THIEN's first fiction, Simple Recipes, won four awards in Canada and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her novel Certainty was a national bestseller, won the Amazon First Novel Award, and was a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, was also a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, was a #1 national bestseller, won the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It sold in many territories around the world. Originally from Vancouver, Thien currently divides her time between New York City and her home in Montreal.

ISBN: 9781039009561
Format: Hardback
Pages: 368
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: May 06, 2025

"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

"A refreshing, surprising, wise and thought-provoking novel about history, fate and human interactions . . . [Thien] is a perfect companion for a voyage that takes us both inward and outward, to a place that our minds have not yet been to." —Yiyun Li, author of Wednesday’s Child

"An immersive, mind-bending experience that intertwines characters and perspectives seldom connected, to create unexpected, resonant bonds . . . [The novel] is written with a lightness of prose that belies the emotional and philosophical weight of the material . . . Remarkable . . . Thien's genius and mastery of her craft is on full display here." —Weike Wang, author of Rental House

"Light radiates from every stunning sentence in this beautiful new novel by Madeleine Thien. The characters, each of them grappling with some of the most profound questions of our time, are illumined by Thien's humane and capacious intelligence. The Book of Records is a tale of exile and loss, of reinvention and longing. But most of all, it is a gifted writer's uncompromising vision of a world where the imagination has the ability to transform the rules of existence, and provide new mercies to those most vulnerable. Transportative, gripping, and tender, The Book of Records has come to us at a moment when we need it most. How lucky we are." —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

"I loved Madeleine Thien's The Book of Records; it broke my heart, and held me together. I have found myself thinking often about Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, as they come to life—and my god, how deeply and stunningly they come to life in this book—and have found great solace in Thien's generous, breathtaking retelling of their stories, and in the novel's reminder that it is only our words, and our small actions, over which we have some modicum of control, so we have to try to wield them for gentleness and decency. The fortunate, brave reader is invited to remember how much love and truth and mystery there is in this world, too." —Moriel Rothman-Zecher, author of Before All the World