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Shortlisted for the Giller Prize 2018

A heartbreaking and timely novel about courage, yearning, the cost of holding onto the past - and the price of letting it go.

Polly and Frank are young and in love, a lifetime together before them. But one evening in 1980, as the Texas sun sets over their shoulders, the world is suddenly pulled apart by a deadly virus. Within months, Frank is dying. Polly can save him, but only if she agrees to a radical plan: to time travel to 1993 for a corporation who can fund his life-saving treatment. She can only go forward, she cannot go back. And she must leave everything she loves behind, including Frank.

All they have is the promise of a future together: they will find each other again in twelve years' time, in Galveston, Texas, where the sea begins.

But when something goes wrong and Polly arrives late, Frank is nowhere to be found. Completely alone, Polly must navigate a terrifying new world to find him, and to discover if their love has endured.
"An Ocean of Minutes is that rare thing - a speculative novel that is as heartfelt as it is philosophical. An original and compelling novel unlike anything you'll read this year."
—Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black

"The clear-eyed, evocative writing here is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, and anyone familiar with The Handmaid's Tale will find resonance in these pages... a devastating debut."
—Toronto Star

"An Ocean of Minutes absolutely swept me away."
—Red Magazine

"A profound meditation on the inhumanity of class and the limits of love... This is a story about the malleability of time, but at its core lives something timeless."
—Omar El Akkad, author of American War
Thea Lim is the author of An Ocean of Minutes, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Thea Lim's writing has been published by Granta, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Salon, The Southampton Review and others. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and she previously served as nonfiction editor at Gulf Coast. She grew up in Singapore and lives in Toronto with her family, where she is a professor of creative writing.

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An Ocean of Minutes