Switzy. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026

***LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026***'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*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 GuestA 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.