A River Called Time

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.