The Book of Records

Set in the Sea, an enclave that serves as a way station between migrations, Madeleine Thien's novel follows Lina, who takes refuge there with her ailing father and a few possessions, among them three volumes of the encyclopedia series The Great Lives of Voyagers. Past and future meet in the shifting building, where Lina befriends neighbors from other eras: a Jewish scholar named Bento from seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Blucher, fleeing the Nazis in 1930s Germany, and Jupiter, a Tang Dynasty poet. Their talks turn on memory, revolution and how people come to their beliefs. It made the longlist for the National Book Critics Circle fiction award.

Barack Obama chose it as one of his favorite books of summer 2025, calling it a lovely fable about migration, memory and the effort to see a shared humanity.