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Longlisted Women's Prize for Fiction 2024
A book of the year for the New York Times, Guardian, Independent, Evening Standard, Spectator, Vanity Fair, People, Advocate, Sydney Morning Herald, Globe and Mail, Den of Geek, Good Housekeeping and Goodreads
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.
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?
Author: Kaliane Bradley
Paperback Published 25 March 2024 336 pages
Originally published in trade paperback 14 May 2024
'Make room on your bookshelves for a new classic'MAX PORTER
'Thought-provoking and horribly clever'ALICE WINN