Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates

Time travel stories are seldom really about time, or travel, and Joyce Carol Oates’ 46th novel is no exception. Audacious, chilling and darkly playful, her thought experiment about belonging and otherness is quick to ignite, but admirably slow to reveal the full extent of its dystopian proposition. The action begins in a queasily familiar near-future America where ‘democracy’ is administered by an acronym-loving bureaucracy appointed by the oligarchic Patriot Party, the only political show in...