2025 Booker Prize (longlist)
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR SO FAR
Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and hope in times of encroaching darkness.
"Startling and ambitious"–New York Times • ‘Virtuosic."– NPR, Fresh Air • ‘Brilliant and heart-stopping."– Los Angeles Times
‘Animated by dark humor and cool fury."– The New Yorker • ‘Remarkable.’– The Washington Post
"This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am, and this is one.’– Percival Everett, author of Pulitzer Prize winner James
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab.She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.
Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing 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, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from over-seas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?
Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and hope in times of encroaching darkness.
"Startling and ambitious"–New York Times • ‘Virtuosic."– NPR, Fresh Air • ‘Brilliant and heart-stopping."– Los Angeles Times
‘Animated by dark humor and cool fury."– The New Yorker • ‘Remarkable.’– The Washington Post
"This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am, and this is one.’– Percival Everett, author of Pulitzer Prize winner James
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab.She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.
Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing 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, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from over-seas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?
Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Wild, exhilarating, heartbreaking...Over and over again, Endling delivers flashes of beauty and grace and dares us to see hope amidst wreckage and ruin." - Anelise Chen
"Maria Reva has made a fantastic novel. It's about so much and yet is laser focused. A scientist who funds her research with sex work, a wild and, at the same time, sensible and normal move. This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am and this is one." - Percival Everett
"Maria Reva's dazzling debut novel Endling will take you on a ride you will never forget. Into this brilliant stew of a novel the fearless Reva stirs Ukraine's notorious 'romance tour' industry, feminist activists, a kidnapping caper, the fine science of snail conservation, the eternal mysteries of family dynamics and Europe's first major land war since World War II. Only a supremely talented writer could handle material like this, and Reva--who seems incapable of writing a dud sentence--shows she's more than up to the task. Open this book, fasten your seatbelt, and brace for impact." - Ben Fountain
"Ironic, sharp, and wise, this is a big (meta)fictional achievement." - Karan Mahajan
"In Maria Reva's all-around brilliant novel Endling, the fate of some snails serves as a harbinger for the fate of Ukraine. The book is funny and smart, full of science, longing and adventure, all the while reminding us what the world stands to lose, and what it has already lost. This is essential reading." - Ann Patchett
"Heartbreaking, hilarious, profound, and vital, Endling is a brilliant, visceral journey that pulses with a powerful sense of urgency and relevance to our times." - Lara Prescott
"Maria Reva has made a fantastic novel. It's about so much and yet is laser focused. A scientist who funds her research with sex work, a wild and, at the same time, sensible and normal move. This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am and this is one." - Percival Everett
"Maria Reva's dazzling debut novel Endling will take you on a ride you will never forget. Into this brilliant stew of a novel the fearless Reva stirs Ukraine's notorious 'romance tour' industry, feminist activists, a kidnapping caper, the fine science of snail conservation, the eternal mysteries of family dynamics and Europe's first major land war since World War II. Only a supremely talented writer could handle material like this, and Reva--who seems incapable of writing a dud sentence--shows she's more than up to the task. Open this book, fasten your seatbelt, and brace for impact." - Ben Fountain
"Ironic, sharp, and wise, this is a big (meta)fictional achievement." - Karan Mahajan
"In Maria Reva's all-around brilliant novel Endling, the fate of some snails serves as a harbinger for the fate of Ukraine. The book is funny and smart, full of science, longing and adventure, all the while reminding us what the world stands to lose, and what it has already lost. This is essential reading." - Ann Patchett
"Heartbreaking, hilarious, profound, and vital, Endling is a brilliant, visceral journey that pulses with a powerful sense of urgency and relevance to our times." - Lara Prescott
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