It took author Madeleine Thien nearly a decade to write her new novel The Book of Records. In the story, 7-year-old Lina and her father take refuge at an imagined place called the Sea. There, ...

Over Passover weekend in April, just before her 100th birthday, family members milled around as she sat on a sofa in her vast, rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She wore a ...