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The Book of Records
Paperback

The Book of Records

$32.99
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The remarkable new novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which leaps across centuries past and future as if different eras were separated by only a door.

'Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time?'

Lina and her father have arrived at an enclave called the Sea, a staging-post between migrations, with only a few possessions, among them three volumes from The Great Voyagers encyclopedia series.

In this mysterious and shape-shifting building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbours: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, excommunicated for his radical thought; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China, whose brilliance goes unrecognised by the state. Their stories fuse with those of philosophers from previous centuries: Baruch Spinoza, Hannah Arendt and the Chinese poet Du Fu. And as Lina's ailing father becomes less well, he recounts how he and Lina came to reside in the Sea, and what his betrayals cost their family and others.

Exploring the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity and the place of faith in our world, The Book of Records addresses fundamental questions about creativity, and good and evil. A deeply philosophical work of huge originality and heft, it shows a master storyteller writing at the height of her powers.

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MORE INFO
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Granta Books
Country
United Kingdom
Date
13 May 2025
Pages
368
ISBN
9781803510743

The remarkable new novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which leaps across centuries past and future as if different eras were separated by only a door.

'Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time?'

Lina and her father have arrived at an enclave called the Sea, a staging-post between migrations, with only a few possessions, among them three volumes from The Great Voyagers encyclopedia series.

In this mysterious and shape-shifting building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbours: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, excommunicated for his radical thought; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China, whose brilliance goes unrecognised by the state. Their stories fuse with those of philosophers from previous centuries: Baruch Spinoza, Hannah Arendt and the Chinese poet Du Fu. And as Lina's ailing father becomes less well, he recounts how he and Lina came to reside in the Sea, and what his betrayals cost their family and others.

Exploring the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity and the place of faith in our world, The Book of Records addresses fundamental questions about creativity, and good and evil. A deeply philosophical work of huge originality and heft, it shows a master storyteller writing at the height of her powers.

Read More
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Granta Books
Country
United Kingdom
Date
13 May 2025
Pages
368
ISBN
9781803510743