Acclaimed Fiction alum Emma Cline '13 will publish her third novel, Switzy, with Random House in September 2026. Switzy follows a deteriorating scion, David Hastings, as he accounts for what he has made of his life in a final voyage to Switzerland.
The destination of David's pilgrimage is a clinic where he will end his life. En route, he will have dinner with his adult daughter in London and reunite with an estranged friend in France. "As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving," said the publisher.
"Assisted dying offers humans the strange gift of knowing exactly when we are to die," Cline told People Magazine. "Let’s say the exit is planned for a certain Tuesday morning at 7 AM. How would this knowledge pressurize your remaining days? Your final night, your last meal, your last glimpse of sunlight?"
Cline's most recent novel, The Guest, propelled the author into stardom when it was lauded as the book of the summer in 2023, the year it was published. BBC has already declared Switzy one of the 40 most exciting books to look forward to in 2026, under the "summer must-read" category.
Emma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow, received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and an O. Henry Award, and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.
