SWITZY

September 8th, 2026

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times best selling author of The Girls and The Guest.

A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting. 

A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.

This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades. 

His final destination is Zurich.     

David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in: the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend’s house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life.  

As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he’s relied on, vanish.

SWITZY

“Hypnotic, eerie, and unsettling…It’s almost scary to think about what a convincing job Cline has done imagining this shattered form of consciousness. Unexpected, beautifully controlled, and almost dangerously captivating.”

-Kirkus Review, starred

“This is sublime…There is a glorious literary paradox at the heart of the work - that a man losing his mind, his memory, his language is nevertheless gifted a voice which feels both absolutely right, yet deeply articulate. A wonder.”

-Mark Haddon

"Her best book yet. Completely extraordinary.”

-Daisy Johnson

“Brilliant, exceptional... it broke my heart. A miracle of a novel.”

-Samantha Harvey

Switzy Emma Cline