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Cover of The Ministry of Time

The Ministry of Time

540 pages

A sharp, swoony collision of bureaucratic satire and time-crossed romance that asks how much of the future we are willing to sacrifice for love.

What it feels like

Reading this feels like stepping into a hyper-modern, slightly paranoid government office where the water cooler gossip revolves around the collapse of the British Empire and Spotify playlists. The narrative crackles with a wry, millennial detachment that slowly thaws into a surprisingly tender, slow-burn romance. It is a briskly paced, genre-bending experience that balances the absurdity of bureaucratic red tape with profound questions about complicity, climate anxiety, and the weight of history. The prose is sharp and observant, effortlessly weaving historical sensibilities with contemporary dread. It will absolutely delight readers who crave a smart, satirical workplace novel that unexpectedly morphs into a high-stakes, deeply emotional love story across centuries.

Mood
  • quirky
  • paranoid
  • romantic
  • melancholic
Tone
  • wry
  • satirical
  • tender
  • sharp
Pace
brisk
Themes
bureaucratic absurdity · culture clash · the weight of history · complicity · doomed romance
The writing
Sharp, observant, and crackling with dry wit, balancing historical sensibilities with hyper-modern millennial anxieties.
The arc
Moves from detached, witty observation of an absurd workplace dynamic into a deeply felt, high-stakes romantic reckoning.
Who it's for
Readers who love genre-bending literary fiction that mixes workplace satire, time-travel mechanics, and swoony, slow-burn romance.
Content notes
  • climate anxiety
  • death
  • colonization themes
  • mild violence

About the book

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.

Description from Open Library.

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