A mesmerising portrait of an unravelling mind, and an ageing man on his final pilgrimage - to Switzerland - from the Sunday Times- bestselling author of The Girls and The Guest It was sometimes like looking at the kindling for a life, a meticulously laid fire that was cold, unlit. The possibility was there, the elements properly arranged, but he couldn''t remember how to make it. After a lifetime working in corporate finance, David Hastings is flying to Switzerland - or Switzy, as they all call it - in a private plane belonging to a former business associate. His memory has started playing tricks on him, and his assistant is behaving suspiciously. In a small leather-bound notebook, he keeps a record of his itinerary: LONDON, TWO DAYS. THREE DAYS ZURICH, COLD. In London, he will attempt to say goodbye to his daughter, Rebecca, but he barely knows her these days. In Zurich is a car that will take him across the border to visit Tom, an old schoolfriend who won''t return David''s letters but lingers in his thoughts. And, finally, the clinic. Profoundly moving and darkly humorous, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when both the accomplishments - and illusions - that have defined him have vanished.

Autorentext

Emma Cline is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Girls, the story collection Daddy and The Guest. 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 and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists

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'Sublime... completely gripping... a wonder' MARK HADDON
'Her best book yet. Completely extraordinary' DAISY JOHNSON

**A mesmerising portrait of an ageing man's last pilgrimage, from the bestselling author of The Girls and The Guest **

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. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting.

A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.

This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades.

His final destination is Zurich.

David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in: the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend's house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life.

As David's arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unravelling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, 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.