Switzy, the third novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and The Guest, Emma Cline '13, has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. A portrait of human mortality, Switzy follows a retired business executive with a degenerative neurological disease as he is shepherded by his assistant to visit friends and family before his medically assisted death in Zurich.
"We live in a time ruled by overpowered and undersocialised wealthy boy kings; Emma Cline's mordant novel considers what, if anything, remains at the end of one such luxurious yet lonely life," the judges said. They continued, noting Cline's essential question: "What makes a life? Cline writes vividly about the trappings of the elite—the private jets, the heirloom watches, all that time spent in the office—as well as their sad social cost in a story that feels immersive, elegiac, and very real. As one of us put it: 'I travel a lot, and know these guys.'"
Founded in the UK in 1969, the Booker Prize is the world's most significant award for a single work of fiction. Each year, the prize is awarded to one sustained work of fiction written in English, published in the UK or Ireland. The shortlist will be announced at a public event at the Southbank Centre, London, on September 22, 2026, which will feature all five judges in conversation. The winning book will be announced on November 9, 2026, at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London, and the winner will receive £50,000, while the shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500.
Cline is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Girls, the story collection Daddy, and The Guest. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors' Choice, as well as 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 received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review, an O. Henry Award, and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.
Switzy will be out with Random House on September 8, 2026, and is available now for preorder.
