The Ministry of Time
On sale
17th October 2024
Price: £20
A special, limited hardback edition featuring a holographic jacket and a new short story, Christmas with the Expats
A 2024 literary highlight for the Sunday Times, The Times, Observer, Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, BBC, Grazia, Evening Standard, ELLE, Dazed, Sunday Express, GQ, i-D, Stylist, Bookseller and Literary Friction
‘A thrilling debut . . . It’s very smart; it’s very silly; and the obvious fun never obscures completely the sheer, gorgeous, wild stretch of her ideas’
GUARDIAN
‘Fast moving and riotously entertaining, a genre-busting blend of wit and wonder’
OBSERVER, 10 best new novelists for 2024
‘Terrific, moving . . . Crack this book open and you’ll see how time can disappear’
FINANCIAL TIMES
‘I loved its combination of extreme whimsy, high seriousness and cool understatement’
THE TIMES
‘A high-energy story with thoughtful things to say about belonging’
INDEPENDENT
‘Utterly winning . . . Readers, I envy you: There’s a smart, witty novel in your future’
WASHINGTON POST
‘Clever, witty and thought-provoking’
KATE MOSSE, author of The Ghost Ship
‘Make room on your bookshelves for a new classic’
MAX PORTER, author of Shy
‘As electric, charming, whimsical and strange as its ripped-from-history cast’
EMILY HENRY, author of Happy Place
‘Thought-provoking and horribly clever – but it also made me laugh out loud’
ALICE WINN, author of In Memoriam
‘A feast of a novel – singular, alarming and (above all) incredibly sexy’
JULIA ARMFIELD, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
‘A weird, kind, clever, heartsick little time bomb of a book’
FRANCIS SPUFFORD, author of Golden Hill
A BOY MEETS A GIRL. THE PAST MEETS THE FUTURE. A FINGER MEETS A TRIGGER. THE BEGINNING MEETS THE END. ENGLAND IS FOREVER. ENGLAND MUST FALL.
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel.
Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.
But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?
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Reviews
I gobbled this up in twenty-four hours: I simply could not stop reading it. Kaliane Bradley writes with the maximalist confidence of P. G. Wodehouse, but also with the page-turning pining of Sally Rooney. It's thought-provoking and horribly clever - but it also made me laugh out loud. And it's got a cracking plot! I loved The Ministry of Time and I can't wait for everyone to read it so I can talk about it more
A fantastic debut: conceptually brilliant, really funny, genuinely moving, written in the most exquisite language and with a wonderful articulation of the knotty complexities of a mixed-race heritage
Sly and illusionless in its use of history, lovely in its sentences, warm - no, hotter than that - in its characterisation, devastating in its denouement. A weird, kind, clever, heartsick little time bomb of a book
An outrageously brilliant debut with a premise that just gets more and more original. The Ministry of Time pulls off the neatest trick of speculative fiction, first estranging us from our own era, and then facilitating our immigration back into the present; but it is also a love story, exploratory, sensitive, charged with possibility, and powered by desire, reminding us that history is synonymous with human beings, and that we all have the ability to change it. This is already the best new book I will have read next year
There aren't many books that are as funny as they are clever as they are compelling. The Ministry of Time is hugely enjoyable: ingeniously constructed, beautifully written, and unexpectedly sexy. It is the rarest of creations: a boldly entertaining page-tuner that is also deeply, thoughtfully engaged with our past, present and future. A weird and tender time-travel love story. A brilliantly original debut. Your next crush is a long-dead Arctic explorer
Holy smokes this novel is an absolute cut above! Kaliane Bradley leaps into a storytelling league of her own. This book is a deadly serious speculative fiction but it is also one of the funniest books I've read in years. It is 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.
Fans of bestseller Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow will adore this time-bending tale that's part love story, part speculative fiction
Intelligent and witty . . . a clever, funny yarn that breathes fresh air into time-travel novels, postcolonial narratives and romance stories alike . . . a sparkling delight
Fizzing with sharp one-liners about everything from Tinder to e-scooters, the novel is also a thoughtful meditation on imperialism and immigration
What a stunning and remarkable wonder! What if time travel were run by a bureaucracy? It would give us The Ministry of Time - a book that takes the history of colonialism, the British Empire, Cambodian genocide, and other terrible moments of history, and reminds us we are still living with the remnants of these troubled pasts. But also, it's filled to the brim with laugh-out-loud humour, and possibly the best description of a dingy pub I've ever read in my life. There's something for everyone - world history, side-splitting humour, lusty tension, brilliant prose, and characters to root for desperately. Bradley describes someone in the novel as being "sweaty and vibeless", but I want to counter with this: The Ministry of Time is the most vibe-forward book I have ever read
Within the first couple of pages I was gripped. The novel is clever, witty and thought-provoking, asking the question of what any of us might do if we could engage live with people from the past. Kaliane Bradley is a wonderful writer and I can't wait to read what she does next
The Ministry of Time is a feast of a novel - singular, alarming and (above all) incredibly sexy. An astonishingly assured debut, offering weird and unexpected delights on every page. I will be running towards whatever Kaliane Bradley writes next
A delightfully audacious screwball comedy
Funny, moving, original, intelligent, beautifully written and with a thunderous plot
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
An assured and fun debut . . . one of our books of the year
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
Wildly original . . . How horny can a speculative fiction novel be? Bradley's debut is at once an outrageously fun comedy while also providing keen analyses on the nature of colonialism, power & bureaucracy
With its ingenious concept and gripping plot, The Ministry of Time is the most fun you could possibly ever have while engaging so seriously with history and our place in it. Bradley has a gift for locating our common humanity in people's irreducible eccentricity. This is a book to read and re-read: you'll want to fall in love with these characters over and over again
Social media is already aflutter about this one, a time-travelling love story
With a thoroughly offbeat love story at its heart and subtly interwoven musings on the UK's imperial legacy, it's fast moving and riotously entertaining, a genre-busting blend of wit and wonder
Bradley's compelling debut novel asks the important question: What if the sexiest guy in the history book moved into your flat? . . . Part romantic comedy, part speculative thriller, the novel weaves together commentary on colonialism, bureaucracy and government with carefully drawn characters and gradually unfurling relationships. Don't start it right before bed unless you want to see the sun come up
One of the year's most exciting debuts is The Ministry of Time . . . a genre-bending romcom about a Victorian polar explorer and a millennial civil servant who end up as housemates thanks to a government experiment in time travel
Unputdownable, endearing and mind-bending . . . what more could you want out of a contemporary novel? Kaliane Bradley is a timeless talent. Whip-smart, empathetic, and totally original
Fantastically fun and deadly serious, The Ministry of Time is an ecstatic celebration of fiction in all its vehement, ungovernable, mutinous glory
Sharp, sexy and utterly self-assured, this is the rarest jewel of them all: a book you can press into the hands of everyone you know, and guarantee it will grab them firmly by the lapels. A truly compulsive debut, packed with humour, heart and heat - we are lucky to exist in the same timeline as Kaliane Bradley
I haven't enjoyed a book this much for a very long time. A wonderful, joyful, intelligent and hilarious read. I underlined as I read and felt a strong sadness at finishing because I could not read it for the first time again
One of the most anticipated debuts of the year
Bradley writes with sparkling vividness and precision, infectiously capturing the mind-bending effects of love. Whizzing up time-travel, romance, espionage, friendship and loss with dazzling assurance, this riotous journey into the British empire and establishment reckons with our colonial past, our myopic present and our fragile future
Compelling, clever, sexy and heartbreaking, The Ministry of Time is one of those books where you reach the end and immediately start again because it's just too hard to let go. Every single page thoroughly delights
My favourite debut novel in a very long time - sexy, sad, funny and clever. I read it in a in absolute rush
Smart and affecting, full of ideas plus that slow-burning love story, it's a wonderful debut
A rare book with very good bones: sharply funny and heart wrenching, a rollicking good time about love, power, politics and time travel
The Ministry of Time gave me back the joy of reading. Heady, compulsive and heartbreaking, Kaliane Bradley deftly balances humour and magic with an interrogation of colonialism, nationalism, otherness and climate fear. Simultaneously wild, irreverent and state-of-the-nation, this novel asks us to consider the histories that have led us to the present moment, in order to salvage our uncertain future
The Ministry of Time is set to take you on a seismic literary journey spanning past, present and future . . . Think: 2024's answer to Outlander
An exhilarating rush of a novel; ingenious, funny, heart-wrenching, dazzlingly written and bursting with unforgettable characters and ideas. Compulsively readable to the last page, The Ministry of Time captures the utter strangeness of our modern world, and of our possible future too, with one of the most audaciously clever and twisty endings I've ever read
This funny, compelling novel is not to be missed
The perfect mix of witty, sexy and moving
It's a smart, gripping work that's also a feast for the senses . . . Bradley's written an edgy, playful and provocative book that's likely to be the most thought-provoking romance novel of the summer
Her utterly winning book is a result of violating not so much the laws of physics as the boundaries of genre. Imagine if The Time Traveler's Wife had an affair with A Gentleman in Moscow . . . Readers, I envy you: There's a smart, witty novel in your future
What a thrill to come to Kaliane Bradley's debut, The Ministry of Time, a novel where things happen, lots of them, and all of them are exciting to read about and interesting to think about . . . give in to the tide of this book, and let it pull you along. It's very smart; it's very silly; and the obvious fun never obscures completely the sheer, gorgeous, wild stretch of her ideas
I loved its combination of extreme whimsy, high seriousness and cool understatement - and migration-as-time-travel is a clever conceit
Terrific, moving . . . Bradley's writing is clear and stylish, her dialogue dry and sprightly; the serious matters of love and mortality are cloaked in humour, but never too heavily. If you loved Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, or the big hit of 2022, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, this will be right up your street . . . don't wait for this tale to come to the small screen. Crack this book open and you'll see how time can disappear
This is extraordinary writing, with unforgettable characters and a spine tingling love affair, and manages to be both a serious look at the weight of history and an absolute riot. A true original
A powerfully drawn love story, an insider's takedown of murky bureaucracy, an action thriller . . . It's a fun ride
Comedy, betrayal and romance collide in a story that explores everything from climate change and colonialism to friendship, hope and forgiveness. Start backing out of your weekend plans now . . .
A triumph
One of 2024's best debuts so far, the book is both goofy and emphatically serious - a time-travelling romcom that's also a subtle rumination on the legacies of empire and colonialism
The debut of the year by a distance . . . propulsive and exhilarating
The smartest, most fun kind of time travel fiction
History collides delightfully with contemporaneity . . . intriguing
An addictive sci-fi romantic comedy . . . Laugh-out-loud funny and a suprisingly powerful meditation on the climate crisis, it's above all exciting, fun and a good old-fashioned page turner that you'll recommend to all your friends
A lot of fun - a romantic comedy wrapped in a science fiction premise with plenty of thought-provoking observations on history. I'm loving it
A thoughtful dive into colonialism via time-travelling expats, the perfect beach read with some literary heft . . . Bradley's debut is also acute on what refuge means in a swiftly changing world
Simply adorable . . . It's the book I have recommended to friends with the most success
My book of the year. And I'd also like to nominate Graham as my "book boyfriend" of the year!
Smart, funny and moving, this debut has been the hit of the year
I was also blown away by Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time, which combines time travel, a gruesome failed polar exploration, British spy craft, post-colonial reckoning and serious (but never lecturer-y) moral grappling about nationhood and othering and thinking-we-know-best-because-we-are-we. All this as well as an utterly compelling narrator, crackling dialogue, sweet romance and steamy sex. An absolute joy
You'll be hooked. Come for the romance, stay for the unravelling of a mystery, the nuanced, genre-bending treatises on race and identity, and the long-lingering ideas on colonialism, empires and the mutability of history
The Ministry of Time pulls historical figures into the near future, where inevitable romantic entanglements complicate a mysterious governmental project
Swoony . . . a crisply observed, laugh-out-loud study of a civil servant trying to do a decent job at a very odd assignment: being a guide of sorts to a person literally plucked out of history and brought into our own time. Bradley's book asks what might be possible-and what hope we as humans might have-if we could meet and truly engage with past people and even our past selves. It's a novel that takes on some big, existential questions about the weight of history with a lightness and deftness that is utterly unexpected and delightful
This romp of a spy thriller-meets-romance sees a civil servant help a time traveller from 1847 adjust to the modern world. But they soon question the program that united them
An enormously ambitious genre mash-up about a Victorian naval commander plucked from a doomed polar expedition to a near-future London as part of a shadowy government experiment. There's plenty of fish-out-of-water humour as he learns how to ride a motorbike (in leathers), use Google ("what is miso paste?") and navigate modern love . . . A BBC adaptation is already in the works. Read it now, so you can smugly tell everyone the book version was better
The book I recommended most often and with the most success this year . . . Fun but not frivolous, intelligent but not belaboured, The Ministry of Time is utterly winning