The Ministry of Time

By: Kaliane Bradley

Narrated by: George Weightman, Katie Leung

The Time Traveller's Wife meets David Mitchell meets Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow meets Kate & Leopold in this debut novel from an award-winning writer.

There are several ways to tell a story.

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.

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?

©2024 Kaliane Bradley (P)2024 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic reviews

A delightfully audacious screwball comedy (Katie Goh, Fiction to be excited for in 2024)

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 (Kate Mosse, bestselling author of THE GHOST SHIP)

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. (Max Porter, bestselling author of SHY)

Smart and affecting, full of ideas plus that slow-burning love story, it's a wonderful debut (David Nicholls, author of YOU ARE HERE)

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 (Eleanor Catton, author of BIRNAM WOOD)

Just great writing !

I loved this book. The imagery was just wonderful to listen to and the story was inventive and fresh

The interesting theme

The story line was interesting and unusual and kept me engaged all the time.
The characters were very engaging.

Disappointing

I started this book with high expectations as I had seen positive reviews. I could hardly finish it. The narrator’s style made it difficult to follow the story..

A book where very little happens but everything happens

The slow burn of the story and the engaging believable characters. A new take on time travel

Tried really hard to finish the book

The book seemed very promising- action, time travel, historical events that I wasn’t very familiar with.. I was disappointed and pushed through because I wanted to know how it ends. Plot is all over the place and I had to go to Reddit to read some more and saw that many readers were puzzled as well. Another mistake I made was not to listen to samples- the female narration was strange: misplaced pauses, voice going too low making it hard to understand the end of the sentence.

The story is so interesting but the narration was hard to follow

Liked the storyline but strongly disliked the narration style. It got to a point where it was hard to follow and I nearly gave up. The plot kept me going but I felt like I was powering through this narrator the whole time which is a shame coz it’s such an original and awesome story

Loved it!

Well written with great characters and an interesting plot. I really enjoyed it. A new author to me and I’ll be checking out her other books.

well done

I liked the historical insights and the compare of the different use of words, sometimes because of change in the zeitgeist. Time traveling storys are confusing and paradoxic, this one also, but we are left content at the end.
Usually I do not like dramatic reading (like the reader is acting) but in this case I hardly noticed, because the story “got me”. So I recommend listen to (or read) this book.

Good

I really want to like this more. I feel like as though it is the bus of a great idea but somehow I just didn’t get the characters enough. Didn’t feel for them. Compare and contrast to the “fifteen lives of Harry August” which has similar themes but is in my opinion much more complete. It takes its time to know the characters.

Very good book, good narrators

Very nice book and the the voice actors are adding personality to it. All in all very well written and read, 4.5