World Literature: Madeleine Thien’s “The Book of Records” with Anderson Tepper

Photo Credit: Rawi Hage. Photo Courtesy: WW Norton.

Virtual tickets for this program will be available soon.

What if the boundaries of time and space could be crossed as easily as the threshold of a door frame?

Pasts and futures collide in Madeleine Thien’s “brilliant outlaw novel” (Los Angeles Times), The Book of Records. Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, The Book of Records follows protagonist Lina and her father after their arrival at an enclave called The Sea.

In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, 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.

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.

You can purchase a copy of Madeleine’s book, The Book of Records, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

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.

About the Moderator:

Anderson Tepper is a guest curator of PEN America’s World Voices Festival and a longstanding member of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Literary Council and international committee. Formerly of Vanity Fair, his writing on books and authors has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and World Literature Today, among other publications. Anderson also serves on City of Asylum’s Advisory Board.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but there will be a public reception with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and drinks following the program.