Madeleine Thien : The Book of Records

The Book of Records is many things: a book of historical fiction and speculative fiction, a meditation on time and on space-time,  on storytelling and truth, on memory and the imagination, a book that impossibly conjures the lives and eras of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the Tang dynasty poet Du Fu and the political theorist Hannah Arendt not as mere ghostly presences but portrayed as vividly and tangibly as if they lived here and now in the room where we hold this very book. But most of all this is a book about books, about words as amulets, about stories as shelters, about novels as life rafts, about strangers saving strangers, about friendships that defy both space and time, about choosing, sometimes at great risk to oneself, life and love. For the bonus audio Madeleine Thien contributes an incredible reading of the poem “Hold Everything Dear” by Gareth Evans. A poem that Evans himself wrote for John Berger. It joins a trove of bonus material, contributions from everyone from Omar El Akkad to Dionne Brand, Viet Thanh Nguyen to Danez Smith. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus material and about all the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.