THE MEN WHO MASTERED TIME

by David Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1987

Curiously old-fashioned time-travel-with-literary-connotations yarn--very British, very correct, very upper-crust--Butler's amiable, modestly successful debut. Elderly English professor Dr. Hawkesworth is visited in his rooms at Oxford by his former student and friend, the mathematician Lord Steerforth; the latter has an odd and alarming tale to tell. With his longtime rival and colleague, the brilliant Pakistani physicist Inayat Khan, Steerforth has invented a time machine (Khan has been helped considerably by his future self, who knows all the answers--but we don't know that yet). A dispute arose over what to do with the machine: Steerforth wanted it reserved as an ultimate defense against nuclear weapons; Khan proposed to use it to change history (for the better, according to Khan). Having stolen the components to build a second machine, Khan then vanished into time. So Steerforth and Hawkesworth resolve to stop Khan--but where and when has he fled? Well, thanks to the old Steerforth/Khan rivalry, the pair know that Khan has left clues embedded in history in order to challenge them. Enter Edwina May McGrath, an American expert on Coleridge: could it be that the poem ""Kubla Khan"" contains the clues Steerforth and Hawkesworth are looking for? Or--even more fantastic--has Inayat Khan become Kubla Khan himself? Yes! And the windup--very forbearing, British old-boy style, towards the malefactor--reveals all. Smoothly handled, quaintly charming work, sure to appeal to Anglophiles with a bent for time-travel fantasy or poetic riddles, or both.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: William Heinemann--dist. by David & Charles

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION