Kaliane Bradley

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The Ministry of Time

'Holy smokes this novel is an absolute cut above! 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 SHY

'An outrageously brilliant debut . . . This is already the best new book I will have read next year'

ELEANOR CATTON, AUTHOR OF BIRNAM WOOD

'Hugely enjoyable . . . Your next crush is a long dead Arctic explorer'

JOANNA QUINN, AUTHOR OF THE WHALEBONE THEATRE

'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'

ALICE WINN, AUTHOR OF IN MEMORIAM

'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'

MARK HADDON, AUTHOR OF THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

'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'

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.

There are several ways to tell a story.

A civil servant starts working as a 'bridge' - a liaison, helpmeet and housemate - in an experimental project that brings expatriates from the past into the twenty-first century. This is a science-fiction story.

In a London safehouse in the 2020s, a disorientated Victorian polar explorer chain smokes while listening to Spotify and learning about political correctness. This is a comedy.

During a long, sultry summer - as the shadows around them grow long and dangerous - two people fall in love, against all odds. This is a romance.

The Ministry of Time is a novel about Commander Graham Gore (R.N. c.1809-c.1847) and a woman known only as the bridge. As their relationship turns from the strictly professional into something more and uneasy truths begin to emerge, they are forced to face the reality of the project that brought them together.

Can love triumph over the structures and histories that shape them?