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A Novel
by Kaliane Bradley
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a "bridge": living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machines," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry's project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley's answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
"[G]leefully delicious...[W]hile this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today. This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[C]lever...a sly and ingenious vehicle for commentary on the disruptions and displacements of modern life." —Publishers Weekly
"The Ministry of Time encapsulates life's paradoxes as easily as it transcends genre. Readers may see echoes of Severance's disaffected second-generation office worker-turned-heroine, or the romantic time travel adventure of Outlander, but Kaliane Bradley has created something equally brilliant and entirely her own." —Shelf Awareness
"A thrilling time-travelling romance about a real-life Victorian polar explorer who is brought from the past into 21st-century London as part of a government experiment... A weird, funny mash-up of The Time Traveler's Wife and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow." —The Times (UK)
"The Ministry of Time is as electric, charming, whimsical, and strange as its ripped-from-history cast. (Extremely.) I loved every second I spent wrapped up in Kaliane Bradley's stunning prose, the moments that made me laugh and those that made my heart ache. This is a book that surprises as much as it delights, and I'm already impatiently waiting for whatever Bradley concocts next." —Emily Henry, author of Happy Place
"Fantastically fun and unmistakably urgent, The Ministry of Time is an ecstatic celebration of fiction in all its vehement, ungovernable, mutinous glory." —Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
"Holy smokes, this novel is an absolute cut above! Kaliane Bradley leaps into a storytelling league of her own. This book is deadly serious speculative fiction, but it is also one of the funniest books I've read in years. It's exciting, surprising, intellectually provocative, weird, radical, tender, and moving. I missed it when I was away from it. I will hurry to re-read it. Make room on your bookshelves for a new classic." —Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers
This information about The Ministry of Time was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short fiction has appeared in Somesuch Stories, The Willowherb Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Extra Teeth, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize.
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