A Spy in Time is a brilliant, thought provoking, engaging time tale spy saga by Imraan Coovadia that is a wholly original book that draws on afrofuturism and more cerebral spy fiction like Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess, and the best of John Le Carré.

Enver Eleven is a new member of the Agency, a covert organization devoted the preservation of the timeline—with everything good and bad that happened in history. He is heading back in time from post apocalyptic times where a supernova wiped out most of Earth except people living in mines deep below Johannesburg—all of them Black (but some albino). His first mission, to Marrakesh in 1955, goes badly wrong from the very beginning.

Thus begins a time and place spanning novel that moves between Marrakesh, Rio, Johannesburg to Jupiter, the destruction of the Earth and as far forward the year 100,000. All the time it is not clear if Enver is on the right side of history or the wrong side, if the shadowy enemy Board is really the enemy, or who is on what side.

The moral ambiguities and shadows concern race, history, conservativeness (in the sense of conserving even what is bad), and more.

The epic saga—in a book that is actually on the short and compact side even if it conveys an almost infinitely voluminous feeling—culminates in a nicely drawn together resolution.