INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the Kirkus Prize, Orwell Prize, and the Ockham Book Award for Fiction Longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award CBC Books' #1 Canadian Novel of 2023 Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, the Globe and Mail, and many more One of Barack Obama's 2023 Summer Reading List titles
From the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries comes an electrifying thriller about ambition, greed, environmental collapse, and how even our best intentions can lead to deadly consequences.
Birnam Wood is on the move . . . 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 has created an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice.
For Mira, Birnam Wood’s founder, occupying the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. The enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira and Birnam Wood, he makes them an offer that would set them up for the long term. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. It is an unflinching look at the surprising consequences of even our most well-intended actions, and an enthralling consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
Eleanor Catton is the author of the international bestseller The Luminaries, winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal, won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Betty Trask Award, and the NZ Society of Authors’ Best First Book Award, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. As a screenwriter, she adapted The Luminaries for television, and Jane Austen’s Emma for feature film. Born in London, Ontario, and raised in New Zealand, she now lives in Cambridge, England.
ISBN: 9780771024375 Format: Hardback Pages: 432 Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Published: March 07, 2023
INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2023 Kirkus Prize, the 2024 Libby Book Award for Best Adult Fiction and the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award
CBC Books' #1 Canadian Novel of 2023
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, Financial Times, the Globe and Mail, The Atlantic, NPR, CBC Books, the Washington Post, Slate, The Telegraph, the Boston Globe, People, Amazon, Indigo, and Apple iBooks Canada
Canadian Read
