Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Ministry of Time

By: Kaliane Bradley
Narrated by: George Weightman, Katie Leung
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.15

Buy for $18.15

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

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
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

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)

What listeners say about The Ministry of Time

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    9
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Just great writing !

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

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..

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!