NATIONAL
BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE MOST
ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF FALL BY: The New
York Times, Associated Press, Goodreads, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, and
more
A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the
award-winning author of The Girls and The Guest.
“Piercing and suspenseful.”—The Wall Street
Journal
“Bold . . . arresting . . . stylistically adventurous.”—The
Boston Globe
“Profoundly moving.”—The Guardian
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 unraveling 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.
