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Canadian-Ukrainian Author Nominated for Booker Prize 2025 for Wartime Novel
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![Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko]( "Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko")
Endling, the debut novel by Canadian author of Ukrainian descent Maria Reva, has been longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, the award’s organizers announced on July 29.
The 2025 Booker Prize longlist features 13 titles representing nine countries across four continents, including Ukraine, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Albania, Hungary, India, Malaysia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Published in 2025 by Virago, the novel follows the surreal journey of three Ukrainian women and a snail through a country on the verge of war.
“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,” the judges noted.
They noted that Maria Reva delivers a riveting and distinctive narrative, and expressed surprise that it marks her debut as a novelist.
Set in 2022, Endling centers on Eva, a fiercely independent scientist scouring Ukraine’s forests and valleys in an attempt to breed rare snails. While her family urges her to settle down and start a family, they remain unaware that she is financing her research by meeting with Western men who arrive in Ukraine on so-called "romance tours" in search of submissive, non-feminist brides.
Two other protagonists—sisters Nastya and Solomiya—are also entangled in the matchmaking industry. Disguised as a bride and her translator, they set out to find their mother, who disappeared while protesting the same tours. What follows is a chaotic road trip across a wartime Ukraine involving three defiant women, a truck full of kidnapped bachelors, and Lifti—the last snail of his kind, carrying the final hope for his species.
Earlier, Ukrainian writer Viktoria Amelina, who was killed in a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk in 2023, had been posthumously awarded the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. The award recognizes her unfinished book Looking at Women Looking at War.
