Hugo Award Best Novel Winner

To Say Nothing of the Dog

by Connie Willis

Summary

A sleep deprived time traveling historian retreats to Victorian England to recover and accidentally tangles a delicate web of cause and effect involving a cathedral relic and a stray cat. Willis turns her Oxford time travel setting toward comedy, paying affectionate homage to Jerome K. Jerome and classic English farce. The novel pairs a light romantic mystery with clever ideas about history, paradox, and the fragility of the timeline.

Historical Context & Significance

To Say Nothing of the Dog won the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novel and shares its time travel framework with Willis's earlier winner Doomsday Book.