Endling by Maria: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
An unforgettable debut novel about the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine.
The Booker Prize 2025 longlist has now been announced – a selection of 13 superb works of long-form fiction, chosen from over 150 titles written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025.
We are thrilled that Endling by Maria Reva has been longlisted for The Booker Prize in 2025, and is one of only two debut novels on the list.
The Booker Prize judges said:
’Endling shouldn’t be funny, but it is – very. Set in Ukraine just as Putin invades, it features three young women, on two different missions, in one vehicle. Structurally wild and playful, Endling is also heart-rending and angry. It examines colonialism, old and neo, the role of women, identity, power and powerlessness, and the very nature of fiction-writing. Maria Reva also tells a riveting, unique story; the shock is that this is her first novel. It’s a book about the world now, and about three unforgettable women, Yeva, Nastia and Solomiya, travelling together in a mobile lab. The endling, by the way, is a snail.’
‘Maria Reva tells a riveting, unique story; the shock is that this is her first novel’
The Booker Prize 2025 judges
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and 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.
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.
So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.
Find out more about all longlisted books here.
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