\u201cThe buildings of the Sea are made of time,\u201d Lina\u2019s father, Wui Shin, says. \u201cI knew that he was pulling my leg and also that he was being truthful,\u201d she tells readers from a vantage point 50 years on. Time is mutable in Thien\u2019s adventurous fourth novel: Helpful neighbors Bento, Blucher, and Jupiter have names that connect them to 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, 20th-century political theorist Hannah Arendt, and Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, protagonists of the three volumes in The Great Lives of Voyagers series Lina\u2019s father snatched as they fled China. Bento, Blucher, and Jupiter recount the lives of Spinoza, Arendt, and Du Fu in ways that demonstrate their intimate familiarity with these dispossessed exiles. Other than the fact that all are homeless, it\u2019s initially hard to see what else links these characters and stories to Lina and her father, or how this faintly surreal narrative fits in with Thien\u2019s previous novels firmly anchored in the grim realities of 20th-century totalitarianism. The continuities become clearer in the novel\u2019s searing second section, which reveals the brutal truth behind Wui Shin\u2019s former job title, \u201ca systems engineer managing the structures of cyberspace,\u201d and revisits themes of coercion, betrayal, and guilt that made Thien\u2019s Booker Prize\u2013shortlisted Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016) so powerful. This is a more abstract work, though its highly intellectual nature is counterpointed by riveting scenes of terror and flight, in particular a nail-biting account of Arendt\u2019s arduous journey across Nazi-occupied Europe to finally head for America in an overcrowded, unstable steamship. If we sometimes lose sight of Lina in these densely interwoven plot strands, that is a risk Thien is willing to take in her bold attempt to reach new ground in an already distinguished literary career.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe buildings of the Sea are made of time,\u201d Lina\u2019s father, Wui Shin, says. \u201cI knew that he was pulling my leg and also that he was being truthful,\u201d she tells readers from a vantage point 50 years on. Time is mutable in Thien\u2019s adventurous fourth novel: Helpful neighbors Bento, Blucher, and Jupiter have names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}