Birnam Wood Shortlisted For Carol Shields Prize For Fiction

10 April 2024

Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood has been shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize For Fiction. The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is the first major English-language literary prize to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States. Further information about the title is below. 

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Published in Large Print in July 2023.
Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, they plant crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the collective has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizeable farm seemingly abandoned. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Billionaire Robert Lemoine has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?