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The Ruiners
Not yet published
Expected 5 Nov 26'With a scathing wit and genuine narrative flair, Ellena Savage has written a contemporary parable about gentrification, class, climate change and the need for political action'
- Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
'A darkly comic, ridiculously smart novel about desire, desperation, hope, disappointment, politics and trying to do the right thing'
- Madeleine Gray, author of Green Dot
'A riot - a book full of wild energy and uncompromising wit, with a huge heart'
- Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace
'Thrilling . . . I stayed up late reading'
- Lauren Oyler, author of No Judgement
Pip's life is going nowhere. She's a university drop-out stuck in a dead-end job at a Melbourne lobster shack. But when her long-absent father dies, she's left an orphan and fifty-thousand dollars richer. She doesn't know what to do with her windfall until she meets Sasha, a dashing young scholar of Balkan literature.
Together, they hatch a mad buy a decrepit house on a distressed Greek island where Sasha will write and Pip will sort out what to do with her life. However, instead of bohemian idyll, the couple find themselves ensnared in an environmental struggle that brings the mistakes of the past into sharp relief.
A dazzling, subversive debut novel, this is a literary page-turner about love, lust, legacy and the last days of civilisation as we know it. Instead of hiding from the world we've inherited, The Ruiners asks how we can create a better one.
'Ellena Savage is savagely smart and talented'
- Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room
- Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
'A darkly comic, ridiculously smart novel about desire, desperation, hope, disappointment, politics and trying to do the right thing'
- Madeleine Gray, author of Green Dot
'A riot - a book full of wild energy and uncompromising wit, with a huge heart'
- Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace
'Thrilling . . . I stayed up late reading'
- Lauren Oyler, author of No Judgement
Pip's life is going nowhere. She's a university drop-out stuck in a dead-end job at a Melbourne lobster shack. But when her long-absent father dies, she's left an orphan and fifty-thousand dollars richer. She doesn't know what to do with her windfall until she meets Sasha, a dashing young scholar of Balkan literature.
Together, they hatch a mad buy a decrepit house on a distressed Greek island where Sasha will write and Pip will sort out what to do with her life. However, instead of bohemian idyll, the couple find themselves ensnared in an environmental struggle that brings the mistakes of the past into sharp relief.
A dazzling, subversive debut novel, this is a literary page-turner about love, lust, legacy and the last days of civilisation as we know it. Instead of hiding from the world we've inherited, The Ruiners asks how we can create a better one.
'Ellena Savage is savagely smart and talented'
- Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room
Audible Audio
Expected publication November 5, 2026
45 people want to read
About the author
Ellena Savage
15 books70 followersEllena Savage is an Australian author and academic. She is the author of the chapbook Yellow City (The Atlas Review, 2019) and numerous essays, stories, and poems published in literary journals internationally. Ellena is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including most recently the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship 2019–2021. She lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, Dominic Amerena.
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