Endling

Eccentric Yeva is a conservation biologist researching snails. She tours Ukraine in her camper van, looking for endlings, the last of their species. She funds her research by working for Romeo Meets Yulia, a mail-order bride company that arranges tours in Ukraine for foreign bachelors. Together with two other women, she kidnaps a group of these men to expose the misogyny of the business. The next day, however, Russia invades Ukraine and everything is turned on its head. The novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The book remarkably combines a comedy examining Ukrainian stereotypes, feminism and the war in Ukraine. It is the debut novel of Maria Reva, who was born in Ukraine but moved to Canada when she was seven.