The Night I Borrowed Time

The ability to time travel is quite possibly one of the most wished for superpowers and any book promising a time travel adventure will immediately attract readers. This highly accomplished and enjoyable debut novel will certainly not disappoint, and readers will also find themselves thinking quite deeply about the philosophy and logistics of time travel as we are gripped by eleven-year-old Zubair’s well-meaning, but increasingly dangerous attempts to manipulate time. Zubair is the baby of his noisy, chaotic family, with a four-year gap between him and his sextuplet older brothers, and he suffers an almost-constant stream of teasing from his siblings, whom he professes to hate. But his biggest worry is the conflict between his parents. His father is recovering from the accident that has stopped him working as a taxi driver, which has increased pressure on Zubair’s mother to earn enough to ensure that their family has all that it needs and leads to her asking her mother to come and help around the house. When Zubair’s gran arrives from Pakistan, she gives him a mysterious amulet that belonged to his great uncle, who was also a seventh son and who was killed during the Partition riots. Zubair discovers that being the seventh son means that he has the power to time travel. Can he use his new skill to go back in time and help fix his parent’s marriage? Each attempt has unintended consequences, and his increasingly desperate actions threaten to destroy the life he has always known and always with the constant threat of him getting trapped in the past. This is such a skilful interweaving of an entirely relatable contemporary family story with equally convincing descriptions of life at the time of Partition and the culture and practice of arranged marriages in Pakistan. The narrative is beautifully paced and pitched, with the serious thought-provoking insights and moments of real pathos and tension interspersed with genuine humour that is frequently driven by the vivid cast of characters and their witty interactions. In fact Zubair’s world is so believable that one becomes entirely convinced by the rules of time travel. The epilogue gives us a very satisfying, gentle and authentic conclusion. We have watched Zubair’s increasing understanding that the adults in his life as fallible people with their own hopes and dreams; he may not have wanted anything to change, but he does learn to accept that change does not always have to be for the worse and more importantly that divorce isn’t anything to do with the children. An important takeaway for readers!