Victoria University Press to publish alumna Eleanor Catton’s third novel

The third novel by Victoria University of Wellington alumna Eleanor Catton will be delivered to Victoria University Press (VUP) at the end of 2017.

A profile image of Eleanor Catton.

Ms Catton, author of The Luminaries, which won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, completed her Master of Arts at Victoria’s International Institute of Modern Letters in 2008.  The manuscript produced during her studies was published in 2008 by VUP as the award-winning novel The Rehearsal. She went on to write The Luminaries, which was published by VUP in 2013.

Her upcoming third novel, Birnam Wood, is a psychological thriller, set in a remote area of New Zealand where scores of ultra-rich foreigners are building fortress-like homes and stockpiling weapons in preparation for a coming global catastrophe.

The novel follows the guerrilla gardening outfit Birnam Wood, a ragtag group of quarrelling leftists who move about the country cultivating other people's land. Their chance encounter with an American billionaire sparks a tragic sequence of events which questions, ultimately, how far each of us would go to ensure our own survival--and at what cost.

Birnam Wood will also be published in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.