Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand writer born in 1985 in Canada and then grew up near Christchurch in New Zealand. His first novel, “La Répétition”, appeared on numerous prize lists and received the prize for best foreign book in 2011. His second novel, “Les Luminaires”, published by Buchet-Chastel in 2015, received the Governor General Award and the Booker Prize, making the author the youngest recipient of the prestigious international distinction.
In New Zealand, Mina Bunting is an activist who heads Birnam Wood, a green guerrilla collective that seeks to cultivate unused land. When a billionaire withdraws his Thorndike property from sale following a landslide, Mina takes over the place at the same time as Robert Lemoine who claims to want to build a bunker on the land.
A great naive, an environmental activist, a billionaire with excessive ambitions. What compromises, what renunciations will they be capable of at a time when their ideals are being put to the test?
Translated from English (Canada) by Marguerite Capelle to Buchet-Chastel editions.