Virtual Event: Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time, with Vanessa Chan

East City Bookshop welcomes Kaliane Bradley to discuss her novel, The Ministry of Time, in conversation with Vanessa Chan.

ABOUT THE MINISTRY OF TIME

“If you’re a fan of Outlander, spy novels, time travel books, or just really innovative and fun storytelling, The Ministry of Time is definitely for you.” —Town & Country, “45 Must-Read Books of Spring 2024”

Part time travel romance, part spy thriller and 100% “multi-faceted joyride” (Harper’s Bazaar, UK): Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilaratingly original debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

KALIANE BRADLEY is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short fiction has appeared in Somesuch Stories, The Willowherb Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and Extra Teeth, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize.

Vanessa Chan is the author of The Storm We Made, a national bestseller, Good Morning America Book Club Pick, and BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. Acquired by international publishers in a flurry of auctions, her forthcoming story collection The Ugliest Babies in the World will be published in 2025. Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more. Chan grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn.