Endling : LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE AND WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE

Hilarious, heartbreaking and strikingly original, Reva’s virtuosic debut about a Ukrainian scientist who funds her research of rare snails by working in the country’s notorious ‘romance tour’ industry mines feminist activism, family dynamics and the starkness of war with incredible dexterity and cool fury.

An unforgettable debut novel about the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine.

Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country's forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and 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.

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.

So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.

MEDIA REVIEWS

Deeply original ... Reva writes as though powered by a jolt of adrenalin ... Endling conjures the deeply online sense of the darkly funny material that emerges from unprecedented times - Observer Books of the Year

Pulls off the trick of being a witty satire, a meta-fiction about how to write about your country and planet in crisis, and a deeply moving war story, all at the same time - Emma Donoghue, Irish Times Books of the Year

A Ukrainian caper taking in endangered snail species and the marriage industry is disrupted, in both the writing and the reading, by Russia's full-scale invasion. Reva handles the formal demands of melding autofiction, road trip and blistering reportage with poignancy and flair - Guardian Books of the Year

Endling shouldn't be funny, but it is - very. Set in Ukraine just as Putin invades, it features three young women, on two different missions, in one vehicle. Structurally wild and playful, Endling is also heart-rending and angry. It examines colonialism, old and neo, the role of women, identity, power and powerlessness, and the very nature of fiction-writing. Maria Reva also tells a riveting, unique story; the shock is that this is her first novel. It's a book about the world now, and about three unforgettable women, Yeva, Nastia and Solomiya, travelling together in a mobile lab. The endling, by the way, is a snail - Booker Prize