Eleanor Catton

Available for over a year

Eleanor Catton became the youngest ever winner of the Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries; a story of love, murder and revenge set during New Zealand’s 19th century Gold Rush and ten years on her new novel is equally ambitious, Birnam Wood is an eco-thriller that pits big tech against environmental activism. The novel takes its title from Macbeth but within the book Birnam Wood are a group of guerrilla gardeners who plant crops in places on the sides of roads, behind buildings, in neglected gardens. After a landslide leaves a large farm and its environs abandoned, Mira, the group’s leader, spots a perfect opportunity for the collective to take a step up when she becomes involved with Robert Lemoine, an American tech billionaire who has plans for a collaboration, but can they trust him? Eleanor talks to Chris Power about morality, deception and why she loves a high body! And historian Lucy Worsley picks Jean Plaidy's The Young Elizabeth as her Book I'd Never Lend. Book List The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael Sandel The Young Elizabeth by Jean Plaidy The Young Florence Nightingale by Jean Plaidy The Young Mary Queen of Scots by Jean Plaidy Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley