Switzy

The finest book yet from the bestselling author of The Girls and The Guest: an ageing man with an unreliable mind plans the final days before he flies to Switzerland

'Sublime... completely gripping... a wonder' MARK HADDON

'Her best book yet. Completely extraordinary' DAISY JOHNSON

‘A real feat... the writing really, really pops' JEM CALDER

*A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK 2026 in: 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. 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 unravelling 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.

About the Author

Emma Cline is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Girls, the story collection Daddy and The Guest. Cline's stories have been published in the New Yorker, Granta, the Paris Review and Best American Short Stories. She received the Plimpton Prize from the Paris Review and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.