A dazzling, subversive debut novel by the acclaimed author of blueberries about love, lust, legacy and the last days of civilisation as we know it.
'Is there any hope for us? is not a question we can answer, and this book does it brilliantly.’ Lauren Olyer, author of No Judgement
What do we inherit from the world and the people in it? And what do we do with that inheritance?
Pip’s life is going nowhere. She’s a university drop-out stuck in a dead-end job at a Melbourne lobster shack. But when her long-absent father dies, she’s left an orphan and fifty-thousand dollars richer. She doesn’t know what to do with her windfall until she meets Sasha, a dashing young scholar of Balkan literature.
Together, they hatch a mad plan: buy a decrepit house on a distressed Greek island where Sasha will write and Pip will sort out what to do with her life. However, instead of bohemian idyll, the couple find themselves ensnared in an environmental struggle that brings the mistakes of the past into sharp relief.
A dazzling, subversive debut novel by the acclaimed author of Blueberries, this is a literary page-turner about love, lust, legacy and the last days of civilisation as we know it. Instead of hiding from the world we’ve inherited, The Ruiners asks how we can create a better one.
'With a scathing wit and genuine narrative flair, Ellena Savage has written a contemporary parable about gentrification, class, climate change and the need for political action in a society that seems to leave it less and less agency.’' Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
About the Author
Ellena Savage is the author of the critically acclaimed essay collection Blueberries (2020). Her stories and essays have been published widely and supported by numerous grants and residential fellowships. The Ruiners is Ellena’s first novel, appearing with Summit Books Australia, Sceptre UK, and Catapult Books in the US.
Industry Reviews
‘Ellena Savage is savagely smart and talented’
– Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake
‘Either a genius or a witch, or my dream coupling of the two’
– Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot
‘I read The Ruiners with an ever more intense combination of excitement, compassion and Schadenfreude. With a scathing wit and genuine narrative flair, Ellena Savage has written a contemporary parable about gentrification, class, climate change and the need for political action in a society that seems to leave it less and less agency.’
– Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
‘The Ruiners is a thrilling, stylish novel of ambition, about intellectual and romantic and political ambition: how it shapes us and we shape, or fail to shape, our world with it in turn. It's the rare contemporary novel that feels both timeless and newsfeed relevant ... but it was the book's sneakily profound political critique, which is of course inseparable from those characters and their relationships, that impressed me most. Is there any hope for us? is not a question we can answer, and this book does it brilliantly.’
– Lauren Olyer, author of No Judgement
‘Ruiners is a riot – a book full of wild energy and uncompromising wit, with a huge heart. Like all my favourite writers, Savage lets no one off the hook but has compassion for everyone. I loved it.’
– Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace
