Madeleine Thien is one of the most renowned Canadian novelists of our time. The Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing joins us in Vancouver to launch The Book of Records, her long-awaited new novel that stunningly captures the infinite joys of art and intellectual endeavour.
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. As she grows up in the building, Lina spends many hours listening to the fascinating tales of three eccentric neighbours: 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 when she is finally told her father’s account of how the two of them came to reside in The Sea, the combined force of these stories sets her on her own path into the unknown future—a voyage in which time occupies space uniquely to bring us to “a place that our minds have not yet been to.” (Yiyun Li)
The Book of Records is a humane and profound feat of storytelling that has been named a most anticipated release of the year by the Toronto Star, Literary Hub, Esquire, and The Washington Post. Thien sits down in conversation with award-winning Canadian author David Chariandy. Books will be for sale by Book Warehouse / Black Bond Books.