El libro de registros

Lina lives in a place called the Sea, a no-place she has reached with her ailing father after fleeing floods in China in the not-too-distant future. Her mother, brother, and aunt remain behind, their whereabouts unknown. In the Sea, the written word holds immense value, and travelers hire scribes to copy poems, prayers, and sometimes the names of the deceased into a ledger. From the window of her apartment on the twelfth floor of a labyrinthine building, they watch migrant boats arrive and depart in quick succession, while reading the only three books they managed to salvage during their escape. Through these readings, and accompanied by her new neighbors—Blucher, Jupiter, and Bento—Lina learns about the philosopher Hannah Arendt's escape from Nazism, the life of the Chinese poet Du Fu in Tang Dynasty China, and the experiences of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza in 17th-century Amsterdam. The teachings of these great thinkers will help him when he has to answer difficult questions about his family and confront the role his father played in the tragic past that forced them to flee. In this mysterious and ever-changing world, those who lived their lives in the past serve as a compass to navigate the present. Memory, education, political revolution, escape, time, imagination, and truth are central to the conversations of these time travelers in search of a new beginning, whose adventures echo other lives and other worlds.