The Ministry of Time
One of the Observer's Debut Novels of 2024
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 7 May 2024
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- £9.99
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- Pre-Order
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
'Fast moving and riotously entertaining, a genre-busting blend of wit and wonder'
10 best new novelists for 2024, Observer
A 2024 literary highlight in the Sunday Times, BBC, Grazia, Dazed, Sunday Express, GQ, i-D, Stylist, Bookseller and Literary Friction, and an Elle Collective Book Club pick
'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
'Funny, moving, original, intelligent, beautifully written and with a thunderous plot'
NATHAN FILER, author of The Shock of the Fall
'Outrageously brilliant'
ELEANOR CATTON, author of Birnam Wood
'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
'You'll want to fall in love with these characters over and over again'
DIANA REID, author of Love & Virtue
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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British Cambodian writer Bradley's clever debut features time travel, romance, cloak-and-dagger plotting, and a critique of the British Empire. The unnamed narrator, who works as a translator for Britain's Ministry of Defence sometime in the near future, is selected by the government to aid a newly formed agency to process time travelers from the past. Her assigned "expat" is real-life polar explorer Lt. Graham Gore, who has arrived in the future sometime before his death during the ill-fated 1845 Franklin expedition, a mind-bender Bradley heads off at the pass ("Anyone who has ever watched a film with time-travel... will know that the moment you start to think about the physics of it, you are in a crock of shit"). The narrator, whose mother was a Cambodian refugee, feels a kinship with Gore's sense of disorientation. The roguishly handsome naval officer lives with her as part of the terms of the assignment, and her account of their burgeoning mutual attraction is interspersed with episodes from Gore's disastrous journey to the Arctic. A thriller-like scenario regarding mortal threats to the narrator and Gore feels secondary; more fruitful are Bradley's depictions of the ways in which time travelers react to modern nightclubs, sexual freedoms, and the news that the empire has "collapse." It's a sly and ingenious vehicle for commentary on the disruptions and displacements of modern life.
