BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST 2026 | Emma recommends... Switzy - Emma Cline

Emma says... An incredibly empathetic and nuanced depiction of the impact of early onset dementia and a journey towards the end of life by euthanasia. Cline's exploration of David's patchy and pot-holed reality will move you to laughter and tears. There is also a lot here about death as the great leveller - although how different that experience can be if your wealth and privilege allow you to pay someone else to manage it for you...

---

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.