Welcome to Book Briefs. Today we explore The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien.

In a novel inspired by Hannah Arendt’s insight—“One can’t say how life is, how chance or fate deals with people, except by telling the tale”—Thien transports us to the Sea, an abandoned military outpost turned “no man’s land,” a stopping point for refugees.

Seven-year-old Lina and her father, Wui, carry only three blue-covered volumes: the lives of Spinoza, Du Fu and Arendt. As Lina puts it, “these blue-covered books were a net that would suspend us outside the present,” slowing time with real and imagined stories.

Ethereal neighbors, uncanny reflections of those voyagers, help Lina survive a place where, as Arendt might say, “time never goes missing.” Thien folds history and fantasy like accordion pleats, weaving cycles of betrayal and forgiveness into a saga of endurance and resistance.

Try to read without weeping profusely.
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