Endling: A Novel

A stunning debut novel by a writer who is "bang-on brilliant" (Miriam Toews), about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction on the eve of the Russian invasion. A darkly comic novel exploring survival, love, and the impact of war.

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

"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

"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. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. 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, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
    Together they embark on the 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 when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva's own experiences as a Ukrainian expat 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 who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and hope that only she can tell.

MARIA REVA was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere, earning a National Magazine Award. She also works as an opera librettist. 

mariareva.ca

ISBN: 9780735278448
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: June 03, 2025

“Startling and ambitious. . . . [A] shining novel.” —The New York Times

“[A] witty, shape-shifting book [that] turns into something trickier and more interesting. . . . Reva’s many strands—the war, the snails, the bride business, the kidnapping, Maria’s writerly anxiety and family ties—dovetail brilliantly.” —NPR

“Dexterous and formally inventive. . . . [Endling] effortlessly resona[tes] with larger ideas, sustained by humour and a sharp and empathetic intelligence.” —The Guardian

"Endling is a thrilling ride. . . . Nabokov comes to mind. . . . Reva . . . is breaking down the molecules of fiction to get at a 'broader, truer truth,' through her combination of drama, self-examination and, notably, humour.” —Financial Times

"Maria Reva creates beautiful, purposeful chaos. Informed by deep personal loss, her startling metafictional debut novel, Endling, is a forceful mashup of storytelling modes that call attention to its interplay of reality and fiction—a Ukrainian tragicomedy of errors colliding with social commentary about the Russian invasion." —Los Angeles Times