THIS IS NEITHER A BOOK BY ELEANOR CATTON, NOR IS IT AFFILIATED WITH HER. IT IS AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION BY BOLD_SUMMARIES THAT DESCRIBES HER BOOK IN DETAIL.

About the Original Book

Birnam Wood, a page-turning thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what motivates us to survive, is the work of The Luminaries author and Booker Prize winner, who also wrote The Luminaries.

Mira Bunting established Birnam Wood, a guerilla gardening collective, five years ago. This activist collective, an unregistered, unsupervised, occasionally criminal, occasionally charitable group of pals, plants crops somewhere no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in abandoned parks, and in forsaken backyards. The team has struggled to turn a profit for years. As a landslide closes the Korowai Pass, cutting off the village of Thorndike, Mira finds a solution and a method to finally prepare the group for the long term. A large farm that appeared to be abandoned after a natural calamity has presented a chance.

Mira is not the only person with an interest in Thorndike, though. When he spots Mira on the property, mysterious American billionaire Robert Lemoine claims to have taken it over in order to build his end-of-the-world bunker. He advises that they farm this area since he is intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their sense of adventure. Can they rely on him, though? Can they trust one another as their views and ideals are put to the test?

Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood, a riveting psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, is Shakespearean in its drama and Austenian in its wit. Like both of these influences, both authors are concerned by what makes us who we are. It is a captivating, frank examination of the human desire to protect our own existence that is ingeniously constructed as a study of intentions, acts, and consequences.