Bureaucracy meets time travel in Kaliane Bradley’s brilliantly imagined and hugely entertaining debut novel. A civil servant working for the British government is recruited to work as a bridge, tasked with helping one of the ‘expats’ extracted from history – in this case, a commander from an ill-fated Arctic expedition in 1847 – to acclimatize to life in 21st century London. What starts out being quite lighthearted fun – as the expats grapple with such modern concepts as Spotify, germ theory, online dating and feminism – gains depth to become a commentary on colonialism and power. I absolutely loved it.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, (List Price: $28.99, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 9781668045145, May 2024)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi