[A] bold attempt to reach new ground in an already distinguished literary career...Challenging fiction that serious readers will find enriching and rewarding.-- "Kirkus (starred review)"

Both deeply serious and delightfully playful, The Book of Records is a kaleidoscopic work, nourishing of both mind and soul, which travels seamlessly and skillfully through time and space with hallucinatory clarity.--James Scudamore, author of English Monsters

Madeleine Thien has an expansive and searching mind and is a perfect companion for a voyage that takes us both inward and outward to a place that our minds have not been to.--Yiyun Li, author of Wednesday's Child

The Book of Records is an immersive, mind-bending experience. . . . Thien's genius and mastery of her craft is on full display here.--Weike Wang, author of Rental House

I am enthralled by this book. . . . Something so small should not be able to hold so much.--James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science and Time Travel: A History

Rich, ambitious, and utterly engrossing, The Book of Records is at once a Borgesian meditation on Time's overlapping folds, and a complex, moving feat of human storytelling. Madeleine Thien is an extraordinary novelist.--Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History

Light radiates from every stunning sentence in this beautiful new novel by Madeleine Thien. . . . Transporting, gripping, and tender, The Book of Records has come to us at a moment when we need it most.--Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, finalist for the Booker Prize

I loved... The Book of Records for how it broke my heart, and for how it held me together.--Moriel Rothman-Zecher, author of Before All the World

Both poetic and lucid, The Book of Records is exquisitely rich and ambitious, weaving a shapeshifting labyrinth of memories and loss. A much-needed book in times like these, it reminds us of the enduring light of humanity.--Yan Ge, author of Elsewhere

Thien writes beautifully about the lives of these thinkers, and their tales of escape from political or religious oppression end up melding with Lina's own story...With The Sea, Thien literalizes a state of mind, the in-betweenness that comes before one makes a major decision. The stories Lina absorbs in that out-of-time place all ask whether to risk your family or your life on behalf of an ideal--whether it's worth sacrificing yourself for another, better world you can't yet see.--Gal Beckerman "The Atlantic"

Madeleine Thien's inventive and ambitious fourth novel, The Book of Records, opens with maximum intrigue...Fans of books like Mohsin Hamid's Exit West and Omar El Akkad's What Strange Paradise will find much to enjoy in the structure, tone, and concerns of The Book of Records. Many readers will find the novel's observations about the nature of authoritarian governments especially timely...One can't help but admire the breadth of Thien's imagination.--Leland Cheuk "Boston Globe"

Thien plunges the reader into thrilling, perilous leaps back and forth across time...Thien's inhabiting of these different timescales is a marvel of research and imagination...Thien's dazzling historical somersault doubles as a plea for humanity.--Catherine Taylor "Financial Times"

An imaginative work of historical fiction.-- "New York Times"

In the tradition of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land, Thien's new work almost seamlessly integrates literary, historical and science fiction.-- "Los Angeles Times"

Thien has grappled with government repression, abandonment and loss in novels such as the Booker finalist Do Not Say We Have Nothing and Dogs at the Perimeter. The Book of Records casts an even wider net, exploring the impact of climate change and political upheaval on global migration...Thien's case for the search for home as a central tenet of our humanity makes this complex novel worthy of attention.-- "Bookpage"