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The Ruiners book cover
The Ruiners
2026
First Published
3.18
Average Rating
304
Number of Pages

A dazzling, subversive debut novel by the acclaimed author of blueberries about love, lust, legacy and the last days of civilisation as we know it. What do we inherit from the world and the people in it? And what do we do with that inheritance? 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 plan: 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 by the acclaimed author of Blueberries, 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.

Avg Rating
3.18
Number of Ratings
57
5 STARS
16%
4 STARS
19%
3 STARS
37%
2 STARS
23%
1 STARS
5%
goodreads

Author

Ellena Savage
Author · 4 books
Ellena 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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