Endling

烏克蘭裔旅加作家瑞瓦以這部充滿急智與機鋒的處女作，一窺戰火下烏克蘭人民的現狀。生物學家葉娃立志拯救烏國境內的瀕危蝸牛！為賺取研究經費，她假意加入烏克蘭新娘相親團；而同團的娜佳向葉娃商借貨車，竟是為了綁架來相親的外國男子，抗議新娘產業！她們載著一車面臨絕子絕孫的蝸牛和男人疾駛於鄉間，卻又遇上烏俄兩軍交戰……

Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and the impact of war.

"This novel turns corners and tables. I love works that are smarter than I am, and this is one.”– Percival Everett, author of National Book Award-winner James

"Funny and smart. This is essential reading.”– Ann Patchett, add bestselling author of Tom Lake

"Pulses with a powerful sense of urgency and relevance to our times."–Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept

Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up and start a family. 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 and modernity.

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—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.

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

But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from overseas: can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?


Endling is a tour de force from an author on the cutting edge of fiction, weaving a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.