Michael Young, a Cambridge graduate student, is confident he has written an excellent dissertation devoted to the origins of Nazism—and he already anticipates a brilliant academic career. For a historian, knowledge of the past is far more important than fantasies about the future. But fate offers Michael a completely different chance: instead of a calm but dull academic career, he will recreate the future—along with the history of the last six decades. And his partner is assigned: an elderly German physicist, Leo Zuckerman, whose soul has been scraped bare by a grim secret stretching back to the darkest years of the 20th century.
With the help of a time machine invented by Leo, they intend to toss tablets for infertility into the water that is being fouled with a hangover by Adolf Hitler. But everything turns out nothing like what this well-meaning English academic pair imagined. The world really has changed. In a radical and incredible way. The question is: has it become better?
Stephen Fry, in his characteristic sarcastic manner, reflects on history and on what is more frightening: absolute evil or a good will. But you probably shouldn’t expect his book to provide answers to global questions. Fry doesn’t answer—he asks.