Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China. Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina's illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family's tragic past.
An all-too-human novel that explores themes of collaboration and resistance, exile and community ... While Thien’s book is a novel of ideas, it’s much more visceral ... Thien’s book is full of unexpected moments of beauty and pleasure I don’t want to ruin for those about to enter its pages. Delight is in discovery.
Inventive and ambitious ... Many readers will find the novel’s observations about the nature of authoritarian governments especially timely ... Though one can’t help but admire the breadth of Thien’s imagination, it’s the child’s story by the sea that this reader wanted more of.
Rapturous ... A book of ideas ... A rich and beautiful novel. It’s serious but playful; a study of limbo and stasis that nonetheless speaks of great movement and change.