The Ruiners

A sexy, cerebral eco-thriller following a young couple who purchase a decrepit house on an environmentally ravaged Greek island, to disastrous personal and political consequences

Pip’s life is going nowhere. A twenty-nine-year-old waitress with a dead-end job at a lobster restaurant in Melbourne, she discovers her long-absent father has died, leaving her both an orphan and fifty -thousand dollars richer. Pip’s new boyfriend, Sasha, a dashing young scholar of Balkan fiction, convinces her to spend the money on a house in Greece. Swept up in their romance, Pip buys a crumbling fixer-upper on the one economically distressed island she can afford. But instead of landing on a bohemian island idyll, the couple and their friends find themselves enmeshed in an environmental struggle that brings the mistakes of the past—and new betrayals—into sharp relief.

A sharp, funny, and deeply felt consideration of global capitalism and its misdoings, The Ruiners announces the arrival of an exciting new talent in literary fiction.