The Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries discusses her new novel, Birnam Wood, a gripping psychological thriller, with fellow writer Val McDermid.

Birnam Wood is on the move…

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned.

This land offers an opportunity to Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice.

But they hadn’t figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place.

Can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A compulsive literary thriller, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama and immersion in character. A satirical examination of our contemporary political moment, the novel lays bare the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

Join Eleanor Catton as she discusses her timely new novel and her writing life.

Eleanor Catton is the author of The Luminaries, winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award and an international bestseller.

Her debut novel, The Rehearsal, won the Betty Trask Prize, 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.

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