In conversation with Matthew Stepanic
Thursday, October 16 | 7 PM
Forsyth Hall, Downtown Library | $10
The Book of Records:
Exquisitely written with extraordinary subtlety of thought, The Book of Records leaps across centuries as if eras were separated by only a door. This is Madeleine Thien at her most exciting, sublime and engaging.
"Intricate and dazzlingly expansive . . . This is a novel with as much to offer the heart as the mind . . . "Pack a book that can withstand a thousand readings," Arendt's husband advises when they're to be interned by the French authorities. The Book of Records is one such volume." ―The Observer
About Madeleine Thien
Madeleine Thien is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes (2001) and three previous novels: Certainty (2006), Dogs at the Perimeter (2011) and Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016). Do Not Say We Have Nothing was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize, and won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, among other honours. Born in Vancouver, Madeleine lives in Montreal and teaches part-time at Brooklyn College at The City University of New York.
The Book Of Records
Set in “The Sea,” a mysterious enclave, a staging-post for waves of migrants coming and going, a building made of time where pasts and futures collide. Here, Lina cares for her ailing father.
Having arrived carrying her few possessions by hand, Lina grows up with only three books to read — about the lives of famous “voyagers” throughout history. As she goes about daily life in the building, she befriends three eccentric neighbours, each with a story to share.
Matthew Stepanic is a queer writer who lives and works on Treaty 6 Territory in Edmonton. They are a co-author of the collaborative novel Project Compass and the author of Relying on that Body, a poetry chapbook about the queens of season 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. They edit and design chapbooks for Agatha Press, and they host and co-organize VERS/E, a monthly queer poetry open mic.
