Longlisted for the Booker Prize — a dazzling, genre-defying novel of snails, mail-order brides and a war that breaks into its own pages.
Yeva is a rogue scientist with a mobile lab, criss-crossing Ukraine on a mission to save its rare snails from extinction — species down to their last individual, the “endlings” of the title. To fund the work, she moonlights for the romance industry: the tours that bring Western bachelors to Ukraine in search of wives. Alongside sisters Nastia and Sona, who have joined the tours with an agenda of their own, Yeva finds herself part of a scheme that spirals from satire into something far stranger — and then Russia's full-scale invasion arrives, and the novel itself fractures under the weight of the real.
Playful and devastating by turns, Endling is that rare thing: a formally daring novel that never loses its heart. Maria Reva — born in Ukraine, raised in Canada — writes the war from inside and outside at once, asking what fiction is for when history refuses to stay on the page.
Honours
- Longlisted for the Booker Prize
About the author
Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. Her story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear was a finalist for multiple awards; Endling is her first novel.
Perfect for readers of
George Saunders, Grey Bees, On Earth As It Is Beneath — and anyone who wants fiction that takes real risks.
