In Kaliane Bradley and Julia Armfield’s new novels, their characters reckon with the past and dire predictions for our collective future. In Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel.

As the true motive of the project emerges, she is forced to confront past choices and imagined futures. Julia Armfield’s Private Rites offers a version of a future world where it has been raining for a long time, the lands have reshaped themselves and the cities have retreated to higher storeys. Old places have been lost and arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice. In this world, three sisters come together to administer their late architect father’s estate, navigating tense family relationships alongside queer love and faith at the end of the world.