The Endling
Overview
A feminist utopia crumbles with one impossible birth.
On an isolated mountaintop, a small feminist community is fracturing under the weight of ideological divides and dwindling numbers. Mila struggles to hold the women together, while deeper in the bush her aunt Frank — an ailing recluse — lives with only her dog, Chicken Midnight, for company. Nearby, an orchid endling approaches its own death, and the extinction of its entire species.
As Frank grows increasingly unwell and secretive about her condition, the community women begin mysteriously falling pregnant. When Mila gives birth to the only boy, their hardline separatist ideals face an impossible test. Vividly expressed, wildly funny, and wholly original, The Endling examines the volatile intersection of community and politics, exploring what happens when the borders we construct between species, between sexes, between self and world prove more porous than we imagine.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Hardback
- 216mm x 135mm
- 256 pages
- 9781917189347
- GBP£16.99
- 9 April 2026
- World
Categories
Praise
‘Keely Jobe’s The Endling is an exquisite debut. A novel that goes right to the heart of urgent environmental, gender, and multispecies conversations and practices, and then probes further — it blooms! I am blown away by the majesty of Jobe’s world — managing voices across species, with an intimacy that speaks to everyone. This is the novel we need to be reading right now.’
‘The Endling is a transformative novel, a real one of a kind. Equal parts tender and feral. An impure delight.’
About the Author
Keely Jobe is a writer of fiction and nonfiction living on the east coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania with her partner and two staffies. Her work has appeared in The Monthly, Island Magazine, Australian Geographic, and Cosmos. She has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tasmania and is the nonfiction editor at Island Magazine. The Endling is her first novel.

