Women's Prize for Fiction 2025: The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley

PRE-ORDER now for your paperback copy, coming in four different colourways (the colour you get will be completely random!). Published 27 March.

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A civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test whether time-travel is feasible. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, supporting and monitoring expat '1847' - Commander Graham Gore, a former Victorian polar explorer. Gore, an adventurer by trade, soon adjusts to this bizarre new world of washing machines, feminism and Spotify; and during a long, sultry summer the pair move from awkwardness to friendship to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures.

Can love triumph over the histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy that history when it is living in your house?