Open Book

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Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

BBC Radio 4 LW

Open Book: Eleanor Catton

19/03/2023

Eleanor Catton

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Eleanor Catton

Chris Power speaks to Eleanor Catton about her new novel, Birnam Wood.

Eleanor Catton talks to Chris Power about her new novel, Birnam Wood, an eco-thriller that pits big tech against environmental activism.

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

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