‘The Ministry of Time’ author talks Graham Greene, James Bond and kissing Barbies
Kaliane Bradley is the author of “The Ministry of Time,” the best-selling debut novel that was chosen for Good Morning America Book Club. A British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London, Bradley has had short stories appear in Electric Literature and Catapult, and she won the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize for her stories “Golden Years” and “Doggerland.” Below, she reveals the inspiration for her novel, recalls a collection she loved as a child, and shares a recent novel that kept her up until 1 a.m.
Q: Would you tell readers about your novel?
“The Ministry of Time” is a tragicomic time-travel romance about empire, bureaucracy and cigarettes. It follows Graham Gore, a Victorian naval officer and ‘expat’ from a doomed 19th century Arctic expedition to the 21st century; and the book’s narrator, his ‘bridge’ – a civil servant who works as a liaison, helpmeet and supervisor for expats from history. I was partly inspired by Graham Greene novels and James Bond films, partly inspired by the history of British polar exploration, and partly just really wanted to mash these two characters together like Barbie dolls to make them kiss.
Q: Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
I don’t know about ‘always’ – it depends on the reader and the situation – but I can tell you I’ve been recommending “Beautyland” by Marie-Helene Bertino to everyone since I read it last month. It’s incredibly funny, it has a sort of deceptive weightlessness of prose that is doing major emotional heavy lifting, and it moved me so much that I finished it on a plane and was weeping so hard that I forgot I’m terrified of flying.
Incidentally, if anyone read that and thought, “Oh, I love novels that make me feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach [complimentary],” I also recommend “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar and “The Storm We Made” by Vanessa Chan.
Q: What are you reading now?
I’ve just finished “Real Americans” by Rachel Khong – what a belter of a novel! I slammed the last page at about 1 a.m. last night and went, “Now that’s writing!” to my fiancé (asleep). I’ve also been in a reading group for James Joyce’s “Ulysses” for the past nine months. We’re finishing the book on Bloomsday. I really don’t know what I’ll do when Joyce’s fart jokes are no longer a part of my regular reading landscape.
Q: How do you decide what to read next?
I have so many TBR piles around my house that the decision has been taken out of my hands. I’m trying to work my way through them.
Q: Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
My joint edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll. It was the first book I read by myself as a small child. I thought – and still think – it was a stupendous work of playfulness and strangeness. I love the way Carroll treated language as plastic, elastic, and endlessly mouldable. I can still recite ‘Jabberwocky’ by heart and half the words in that aren’t real.
Q: Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
I’m planning on shunting the “Ulysses” gang into a long group read of “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo, but I’m worried it won’t be as fun (fewer fart jokes), or that we’ll lose momentum because it is so large and requires a fair bit of commitment. I’ve never even seen the musical so I don’t know what to expect. Anna Hathaway has a bad time, I think?
Q: Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?
Pretty much anything written by Kingsley Amis feels like it was written against me, even as I find him very funny (in a ghastly way) and an effortless stylist. I identified with Margaret Peel in “Lucky Jim” out of sheer pique.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
I recently read “The Conquest of Bread” by Peter Kropotkin and I was amazed by his empathy for and understanding of the contribution of unwaged domestic labour and care work – chiefly performed by women – to the economy and to communities. It really cheered me up to imagine that a man in 1892 (!!!) was already certain that the emancipation of women had to involve liberation from, or truly equal sharing of, those forms of unwaged labour.
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Yes, it’s the cover of “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley, available from all good bookshops.
Q: Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
I don’t listen to audiobooks. My brain goes for a walk and I miss key plot points. I’d experience “Anna Karenina” as a novella.
Q: Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
I read a lot of literary fiction and classic fiction. I’d like to read more classic SFF. Over the course of the “Ministry” book tour, I’ve also met a lot of romance writers and booksellers, and I’ve found them so welcoming, smart and unpretentious. I’d love to read more romance.
Q: Do you have a favorite book or books?
Too many to list. I can tell you that my most re-read books are from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. They have sometimes felt like a life raft to me.
Q: Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?
On the TBR pile next to my bed (as distinct from, say, the TBR pile in my office, the other TBR pile in my officer, and my TBR pile at work), the next two books are “Thousand Cranes” by Yasunari Kawabata (in Edward G. Seidensticker’s translation), and Aristotle’s “Poetics” (in Malcolm Heath’s translation). They are both extremely short. “Ulysses” has been so very long, you see. Brilliant, and one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read, but so. very. long.
Q: Is there a person who made impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
My grandmother – my dad’s mother – wanted me to be Extremely Literate, on the grounds that this was how one got on in life. (Regrettably I think you have to be Extremely Numerate, which I am not.) I was given a copy of Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare” when I was a small child, along with the aforementioned copy of “Alice in Wonderland.” When I was about 11, she gave me “Frost in May” by Antonia White (she’d been brought up in a Catholic convent) which blew my tiny mind; and “Masquerade” by Kit Williams, which I was simply not clever enough to solve but I liked looking at anyway.
Q: What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
The language. There’s no particular style that I prefer, but I most admire style that feels deliberate and crafted, that’s serving a particular purpose. I also like it when you can see the writer just doing gymnastics at sentence level. That’s very fun. I know that, e.g., Sheena Patel, Francis Spufford, Julia Armfield, Bryan Washington, Ben Marcus, Raven Leilani and A.K. Blakemore are all doing extremely different things – but I think they’re all being deliberate and also brilliant. This is also why I think translators are so important, and why it’s always worth naming the translator of a book; their creative and stylistic choices will change the way you read a work in translation.
Q: What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?
I read “As Meat Loves Salt” by Maria McCann when I had COVID during a 40-degree Celsius [104 degree Fahrenheit] heatwave and it felt like the text was happening just behind my left shoulder (I was very feverish). I got COVID again earlier this year, while I was reading “City of Corpses” by Yoko Ota (in Richard Minear’s translation). It’s about the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, which Ota survived. I do not recommend reading this book when you are very sick and distressed as it is.
Q: What’s something about your book that no one knows?
Well, that would be telling.
Q: If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
Is “Les Misérables” any good?
For more about the novel, go to the Kaliane Bradley author page