Ministry Of Time, Kaliane Bradley
“Is it ethical to play with time, or is history better left untouched? A poignant comparison is made between time travel and asylum – of people displaced and estranged from their homes.”
Imagine explaining Netflix to somebody from 1847 – it's no easy feat, let alone attempting to explain World War Two to people who never imagined the World War would soon become plural. The Ministry of Time by British-Cambodian author Kaliane Bradley is feverishly anticipated, following her award-winning short stories; think romance in the context of befuddling, existential and wildly amusing time travel.
Our protagonist has secured a secret role in the Ministry as a bridge for Commander Graham Gore, a character based on the real-life figure of the same name. ‘Bridges’ are employed to ease the transition for ex-pats, plucked from the past and flung into their faraway future, and our present. Tension is rife for both the characters and the reader; the Ministry harbours dangerous secrets, and friction arises from a Victorian adjusting to modern ways. There is also an addictive chemistry between Gore and our protagonist – a slow-burn love that hardly seems possible considering the, technically speaking, 200-year age gap.
Chapters of the present day, itself an ambiguous term, are interspersed with flashbacks of the Sir John Franklins failed Arctic expedition, from which Gore was rescued in 1847, by the future. The writing here is urgent and frighteningly grisly. Amidst sci-fi romance and the slick but silly appeal of spy-related happenings, The Ministry of Time is an interrogation of morality. The reader reckons with horrors of our modern history, the Holocaust and Twin Towers for example, through the eyes of ex-pats from the past.
Though Bradley doesn’t dwell in these dark places, it’s an unsettling notion of how rapidly atrocities are talked about as though normalised, and not the truly terrible events they were. The novel is also scattered with commentary on race. The workplace, even the futuristic kinds, become reflections of racism, made grittier by the presence of expats who hail from times of rigid prejudice.
Is it ethical to play with time, or is history better left untouched? A poignant comparison is made between time travel and asylum – of people displaced and estranged from their homes. In this case, it’s the charming, dignified imperial adventurer, Gore.
Although Bradley leaves the reader with a boggled head and an aching heart, her writing is deliciously smart, sly, and frank, and we’re left eager to delve back into her outrageous creativity all over again before the dust has even settled.
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