Review: Madeleine Thien’s voyagers embrace humanity. That makes them outlaws

A Father and Daughter Caught in the No Man’s Land of Migration

THE BOOK OF RECORDS, by Madeleine Thien In 1971, decades after her exile from Europe, the German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote to her friend, the novelist Mary McCarthy: “One can’t say how life is, how chance or fate deals with people, except by telling the tale.” The generative power of storytelling inspires Madeleine Thien’s deeply humane novel “The Book of Records.” In an aching, dreamlike narrative that overlaps distant centuri…

Review: Madeleine Thien’s voyagers embrace humanity. That makes them outlaws

In Madeleine Thien's speculative fiction about a climate-ravaged future, 7-year-old Lina learns from past voyagers and other time travelers.

Book review of The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien

Madeleine Thien makes a case for the search for home as a central tenet of our humanity in her complex, ambitious fourth novel, The Book of Records.