Endling

WINNER OF THE ATWOOD GIBSON WRITERS’ TRUST FICTION PRIZE WINNER OF THE AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARD WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE WINNER OF THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE AND THE THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION AND THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE Named A Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail • The New Yorker • CBC • Indigo • Publishers Weekly • The Irish Times • The Observer • The Guardian • The Boston Globe • The Washington Post • NPR • Good Housekeeping • Library Journal A stunning debut novel by a writer who is “bang-on brilliant” (Miriam Toews), about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction on the eve of the Russian invasion. A darkly comic novel exploring survival, love, and the impact of war. “Funny and smart. This is essential reading.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Tom Lake “This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am, and this is one.” —Percival Everett, author of National Book Award-winner James “Pulses with a powerful sense of urgency and relevance to our times.” —Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests, trying and failing to breed rare snails. To fund her work, she entertains Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile wives. Nastia and Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator. Together, the three women embark on the journey of a lifetime with a truckful of kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-his-kind snail—that is, until Russia invades. A darkly comic novel, Endling draws on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, she probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? Once shattered, can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored? Endling is a metafictional tour de force weaving love, loss, humor, and devastation in a story only this author can tell.