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Switzy

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026

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Switzy

By: Emma Cline
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
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**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026**

*A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK 2026: BBC, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, Bookstr, Glossary, Paper Trails*

A mesmerising portrait of an ageing man’s last pilgrimage, from the bestselling 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. In his pocket is a notebook filled with urgent reminders — but he can no longer read his own handwriting.

He’s travelling with his assistant. There will be a stopover in London, dinner with his adult daughter, a meeting in France with an old friend. His final destination: a clinic in Zurich.

As David glides through hotel rooms, airports and foreign cities, his grasp on the present slips away and the past rushes in.

With David’s arrival in Zurich looming, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unravelling mind emerges. Hypnotic and moving, 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.

'Immersive, elegiac, and very real' BOOKER PRIZE 2026 JUDGES
'Sublime... completely gripping... a wonder' MARK HADDON
'Her best book yet. Completely extraordinary' DAISY JOHNSON
‘Poignant but unsentimental, it is her best novel yet' JEM CALDER

© Emma Cline 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Aviation England
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Critic reviews

A perfect novel, one that goes to the places only novels can go (Samantha Harvey)
This superb Booker-nominated novel follows an ailing, unreliable narrator as he seeks to end his life before he is lost to dementia (Olivia Ovenden)
A magnificent high-wire book that turns a personal crisis into a reckoning with modern life... a stunning achievement (Johanna Thomas-Corr)
A devastating portrait of a seventysomething man’s final pilgrimage, Cline breaks new ground, plumbing existential questions about mortality, memory and the impossibility of ever truly knowing one another (Adrienne Westenfeld)
Profoundly moving... the last pages of Switzy, which mingle horror, beauty, absurdity, and a sense of profound finality, will probably stay with me for ever (Chris Power)
Cline writes vividly about the trappings of the elite – the private jets, the heirloom watches – as well as their sad social cost in a story that feels immersive, elegiac, and very real
An astoundingly original depiction of an interior life... both startlingly moving and keenly funny... Cline's best novel yet (Natalie Portman)
Poignant and darkly funny (Felicity Blunt)
A bravura portrait of a failing mind, told from the inside
Not always an easy read, but it’s funny, relatable, and poignant
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