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Birnam Wood
Eco-thriller meets Shakespearean tragedy in this new release from Booker winner Catton. Birnam Wood is the Shakespeare-inspired name of an idealistic activist group focused on guerilla gardening efforts. When their pragmatic leader crosses paths with a powerful American billionaire, he persuades her to enter into an unlikely but perhaps mutually beneficial partnership pertaining to land adjoining a national park. But neither party is willing to acknowledge its true aims, and the consequences could be deadly. This high-stakes, action-packed tale features environmental rights, big egos, privacy concerns, politics, and more. This is compulsively readable literary fiction. The jaw-dropping ending also makes this an excellent pick for book clubs: there's so much to talk about!
About the Book
The publisher calls this “Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?”
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