Switzy

Emma Cline

A mesmerising portrait of an ageing man's last pilgrimage and his fading mind, 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. 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.