A monumental speculative fiction story of love, loyalty, politics, and
conscience, set in parallel Londons.
* Short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award
"Newland...imagines a world where colonialism never happened at
all...It's speculative fiction that genuinely made me speculate."
--Wired
"A dystopian multiverse imagined at thrilling
scale...Extraordinary...The excitement lies largely in its ideas about
power and personal responsibility."
--Times Literary Supplement
"Newland has produced a text that piques and provokes, providing a
guidebook to worlds both uncomfortably familiar and radically new."
--Strange Horizons
"An immersive speculative novel set in a dystopian city that's facing an
uprising."
--Foreword Reviews, a Book of the Day selection
"What would London be like if the UK had not colonized half the world?
That's the question that drives Courttia Newland's A River Called
Time. When young Markriss has the opportunity to move into the Ark--a
massive structure that promises a utopian existence for the invited--he
takes it, only to find that the world of his dreams isn't as idyllic as
he was promised."
--Bustle
"Part sci-fi, fantasy, and Afro-futurism but not squarely one or the
other, A River Called Time transports the reader into a London undone
by time, a London of possibility and, necessarily, of new villains."
--Public Books
"No one can doubt the sheer energy and verve of Newland's vision."
--The Guardian (UK), Book of the Day selection
"This mystical coming-of-age tale...is sure to please fans of
thought-provoking speculative fiction."
--Publishers Weekly
"This is an ambitiously imagined book that, by removing the European
lens on African cultures, creates a new reality that allows us to
question how we view our own. Complex and multilayered, this novel opens
the door to the possibilities of noncolonial worlds."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A River Called Time is ambitious, sprawling, unpredictable and
fascinating...A relentlessly imaginative novel about a world where
colonialism and slavery never occurred and yet brutal inequality
persists."
--Shelf Awareness
"Courttia Newland is a formidable writer...And his latest work, A River
Called Time, is an extraordinary piece of speculative fiction...Newland
offers a brilliant remix of history...This may be a work of speculative
fiction but its critical lens is present and prescient."
--Financial Times, reviewed by Imani Perry
The Ark was built to save the lives of the many, but rapidly became a
refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning.
Years after the Ark was cut off from the world--a world much like our
own, but in which slavery has never existed--a chance of survival within
the Ark's confines is granted to a select few who can prove their worth.
Among their number is Markriss Denny, whose path to future excellence is
marred only by a closely guarded secret: without warning, his spirit
leaves his body, allowing him to see and experience a world far beyond
his physical limitations.
Once inside the Ark, Denny learns of another with the same power, whose
existence could spell catastrophe for humanity. He is forced into a
desperate race to understand his abilities, and in doing so uncovers the
truth about the Ark, himself, and the people he thought he once knew.
