Folger Book Club:
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
An “eco-thriller” that follows a group of guerilla gardeners in New Zealand and asks questions about morality and ambition, drawing on themes and relationships from Macbeth.
Booking and details
Dates Thu, Aug 1, 2024, 6:30pm
Tickets Free, Registration required
Duration 6:30pm - 8:00pm (ET)
Our August 2024 Pick
Birnam Wood
by Eleanor Catton
The Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.
Birnam Wood is on the move . . .
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.
But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
Why did we choose this?
The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists. Folger Book Club explores connections between contemporary fiction and the Folger’s mission, collection, and programming.
Kicking off our “Whose Democracy?” season, Birnam Wood asks questions about who truly holds power and how personal boundaries are continuously redrawn by ambition and opportunity, inspired by themes and relationships in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
About the Book Club
Our informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres—all sourced from a different local, independent bookstore partner each month.
Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the plot and themes of the novel. After the presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.
Content transparency
Birnam Wood includes potentially sensitive subjects. Expand below for a full list of content (may include spoilers).
- Drug use
- Physical/gun violence
- Murder
- Vehicular manslaughter
- Suicide (referenced)
Guest Speaker
Todd Andrew Borlik
Todd Andrew Borlik is currently Professor of Shakespeare Studies & Renaissance Literature at the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and will soon be taking up the post of Teaching Professor at Purdue University–Indianapolis. He is the author of three books and around thirty articles and book chapters. His work has appeared in academic journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Bulletin, and English Literary Renaissance. His piece on The Tempest and the draining of the fens has been ranked among the most-read articles in the Shakespeare journal. Other recent publications have explored cyberpunk Hamlets, Cleopatra and Renaissance snake handlers, and Friar Bacon’s fantasy of engirdling England in a wall of brass. His most recent monograph Shakespeare Beyond the Green World examines how Shakespeare’s late play intervene in environmental policy disputes at the Jacobean court. He is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and the Natural World and collections on The Winter’s Tale and Early Modern Witch Plays.
Listen to Todd Andrew Borlik on Shakespeare Unlimited
Shakespeare, ecology, and the environment
What does Shakespeare say about ecology and its politically engaged cousin environmentalism? Neither term appears in his work—unsurprising since they hadn’t been coined yet.
This month, we are thrilled to partner again with Politics and Prose, DC’s premiere independent bookstore devoted to cultivating community and strengthening the common good through books, programs, and a respectful exchange of ideas.
Orders can be placed online, or at any of the locations throughout DC—Connecticut Avenue NW, The Wharf, and Union Market.
We would like to thank the following organization for its generous support of this program
