The End of Romance
Australia

The End of Romance

by Maria Takolander

Family & Heritage Science Fiction Fiction Dystopia 2026

Summary

Set in a dystopian future devastated by environmental collapse, The End of Romance follows a mother and her son as they struggle to survive in a world where nature has become hostile and human society is crumbling. Thorn-bearing plants dominate the landscape, toxic fogs make life increasingly dangerous, and communities face relentless hardship. While some people attempt to survive independently, others remain trapped within increasingly authoritarian systems.

The woman’s son attends a military school, like all boys his age. When he reaches sixteen, he will be sent to a distant planet known as the Promised Land to fight in a colonising war presented as humanity’s only hope for survival. Determined to protect her child, his mother begins questioning the world she has accepted. Her encounter with a mysterious young man who has somehow escaped conscription offers a possible route to sanctuary.

Combining dystopian fiction with unsettling social commentary, Takolander explores motherhood, sacrifice, environmental destruction, and the myths societies create to justify violence. The novel asks what it means to remain human when survival demands extraordinary moral compromises.

Reviews

Login to leave a review.

No reviews yet. Be the first!

You might also like

Untethered
Untethered
Ayesha Inoon
The Yield
The Yield
Tara June Winch
On Not Climbing Mountains
On Not Climbing Mountains
Claire Thomas
The Underworld
The Underworld
Sofie Laguna
Country
Australia
Oceania
About the author
Maria Takolander
Maria Takolander

Maria Takolander is an award-winning Finnish-Australian writer, poet, and literary scholar born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1973 to Finnish parents. She holds a PhD in Literary Studies from Deakin University, where her academic research has explored magical realism and the nature of creativity. She lives in Geelong, Victoria, and has worked as an academic alongside her literary career. Takolander first gained recognition as a poet with Narcissism (2005), followed by Ghostly Subjects (2009) and The End of the World (2014). Her poetry often explores unsettling aspects of human experience, including violence, domestic life, mortality, and environmental catastrophe. Her collection Trigger Warning (2021) won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. As a fiction writer, Takolander won the inaugural Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize in 2010. Her short-story collection The Double and Other Stories (2013) was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award. Her novel The End of Romance (2026) extends her exploration of humanity’s darker impulses into dystopian fiction, examining environmental collapse, motherhood, and survival. Takolander’s writing is known for its intellectual precision, unsettling imagery, and willingness to confront difficult questions about human nature and the world we inhabit.

View author page
Details
Published
2026
Author
Maria Takolander