Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Certainty | 2006 | Madeleine Thien | Buy |
| 2 | Dogs at the Perimeter | 2011 | Madeleine Thien | Buy |
| 3 | Do Not Say We Have Nothing | 2016 | Madeleine Thien | Buy |
| 4 | The Book of Records | 2025 | Madeleine Thien | Buy |
Madeleine Thien’s standalone novels show a writer steadily expanding the scale of her ambition. Certainty (2006), her debut novel, follows a woman reconstructing her father’s past after his death, moving between Malaysia and Canada with careful attention to the texture of memory. Dogs at the Perimeter (2011) addresses the Cambodian genocide through the experience of a survivor now living in Montreal — a short, austere book that deals with trauma without melodrama.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016) is a generational epic by comparison, following musicians through the worst decades of Mao’s China and into the present. It is the kind of novel that takes on enormous historical territory while keeping its characters human and particular. The Book of Records (2025) is her most recent work and continues the themes of music, family, and historical memory that run through her fiction.