For a book to be good – really good, keep it on your shelf for ever good – it has to be two things: fun and a stretch. You have to need to know what happens next; and you have to feel like a bigger or better version of yourself at the end. Airport thrillers are almost always fun; much contemporary autofiction is just a stretch, largely because it’s very hard for a book in which not much happens to be a page-turner. What a thrill, then, to come to Kaliane Bradley’s debut, The Ministry of Time, a novel where things happen, lots of them, and all of them are exciting to read about and interesting to think about.
Bradley’s book is also serious, it must be said – or, at least, covers serious subjects. The British empire, murder, government corruption, the refugee crisis, climate change, the Cambodian genocide, Auschwitz, 9/11 and the fallibility of the human moral compass all fall squarely within Bradley’s remit. Fortunately, however, these vast themes are handled deftly and in deference to character and plot.
