0
    • Common Reads Library Marketing
    0 0
    Download high-resolution image

    Switzy

    A Novel

    Author Emma Cline
    Audiobook Download
    Books on Tape
    On sale Sep 08, 2026 | 10 Hours and 0 Minutes | 9798217405800
    Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    See Additional Formats
    View on Edelweiss
    A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times best selling 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 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.
    Praise for Emma Cline

    “Under [Emma] Cline’s command, every sentence [is] as sharp as a scalpel.”—The New York Times

    “Cline sees the world exactly and generously. On every other page, it seems, there is something remarkable.”—The New Yorker

    “One of the boldest, most complicated writers working today.”—San Francisco Chronicle

    “Cline is a master of depicting the nefarious and atmospheric menace that often lurks adjacent to our most glittery environments.”—Vogue

    “Cline’s fiction is full of binaries pressing up against one another; youthful promise and life’s realities; success and failure; darkness and humor.”—The Wall Street Journal

    “One of the best and most discomfiting young writers working today.”—Entertainment Weekly
    © Caroline Tompkins
    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. View titles by Emma Cline

    About

    A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times best selling 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 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.

    Reviews

    Praise for Emma Cline

    “Under [Emma] Cline’s command, every sentence [is] as sharp as a scalpel.”—The New York Times

    “Cline sees the world exactly and generously. On every other page, it seems, there is something remarkable.”—The New Yorker

    “One of the boldest, most complicated writers working today.”—San Francisco Chronicle

    “Cline is a master of depicting the nefarious and atmospheric menace that often lurks adjacent to our most glittery environments.”—Vogue

    “Cline’s fiction is full of binaries pressing up against one another; youthful promise and life’s realities; success and failure; darkness and humor.”—The Wall Street Journal

    “One of the best and most discomfiting young writers working today.”—Entertainment Weekly

    Author

    © Caroline Tompkins
    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. View titles by Emma Cline

    Additional formats

    Other Books by this Author

    Related Articles

    Penguin Random House Library Marketing

    © 2026 Penguin Random House

    Back to Top
    0
    Wish List (0)
    • More Websites from
      Penguin Random House
    • Common Reads
    • Library Marketing