'Her characters are deeply flawed but you can't help but root for them.' The Guardian praises Catton as a 'novelist of lavish technical gifts who addresses herself to the world, broadly and richly conceived.' Birnam Wood is, says the review, 'another virtuoso performance: elaborately plotted, richly conceived, enormously readable'. 'Catton is not just a master at spinning a web of competing philosophies, ' says. Eco-activism meets staggering affluence when the young members of an environmental rights group end up being entangled with a billionaire drone manufacturer. (RL)Įleanor Catton won the Booker Prize in 2013 for her novel The Luminaries, and the New Zealand author's latest offering, witty thriller Birnam Wood, has also been highly acclaimed. In this novel, Rushdie has created 'an alternative Mahabharata', writes The Guardian, 'an elaborate founding myth from the bare bones of history'. Kampana's fortune, over centuries, becomes interwoven with that of the great empire of Bisnaga, the 'victory city' of the title. Its heroine is a grief-stricken nine-year-old girl, Pampa Kampana, who is instructed by a goddess to create equality for women in a patriarchal world. The 15th novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and Quichotte, Victory City, described by The New Yorker as 'immensely enjoyable', is an era-spanning epic that begins in 14th-Century southern India.

Kayson by Jenny Wood