Birnam Wood

Birnam Wood follows Mira Bunting, founder of a scrappy activist gardening collective, as she scouts an abandoned South Island farm near the closed Korowai Pass. The land belongs to pest-control magnate Sir Owen Darvish, whose recent partnership with American tech tycoon Robert Lemoine makes the place look like a jackpot Mira can’t let go. When Mira trespasses to survey the soil, she stumbles into Lemoine at his private airstrip—and into a game he has already rigged. He hacks her phone, studies the group, and soon dangles a six-figure “gift” that could make Birnam Wood legitimate at last.

Back in the city, Mira’s closest ally, Shelley, wants out. Tony, a lapsed member returned from overseas and burning to write his first big exposé, senses rot behind Lemoine’s bunker talk. By the time the collective relocates to Thorndike, the pass remains closed, a secret rare-earth operation hums in the national park, and every character believes they can still steer the story. What begins as a social satire tightens into a thriller about power: who hoards it, who launders it, and who pays for its cleanup.

• Listeners who love morally complex literary thrillers with social bite
• Fans of novels about power, climate, and media narratives
• Book club readers who enjoy character-driven debates that explode into plot

Eleanor Catton is the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries and The Rehearsal. A novelist and screenwriter born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, she blends sharp social satire with propulsive plotting. In Birnam Wood, she turns her eye to power, climate, and the stories we tell to excuse both.