Eleanor Catton, the youngest ever Booker-prize winning author, has sold the rights to her third novel, a psychological thriller set in rural New Zealand where super-rich foreigners face off with ragtag locals on the eve of a global catastrophe.

According to Catton’s agent, Caroline Dawnay, the novel, entitled Birnam Wood (a reference to a scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth) is set in a remote part of the country where the mega-wealthy have stored caches of weapons in fortress-like homes in preparation for disaster.

Described as a “psychological thriller”, the novel follows the guerrilla gardening outfit Birnam Wood, a 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.



The planned new novel will showcase a change in style for Auckland-based Catton, and will be less than half the size of The Luminaries at 80,000-100,000 words.



Catton, 31, won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries, an epic historical saga set during the New Zealand gold rush, in 2013.

Fergus Barrowman, publisher of Victoria University Press in Wellington said a six-figure advance was signed with Catton over the weekend - the largest sum he has ever paid for the work of a New Zealand author.



Catton has also signed again with Granta to distribute UK and Australian rights, McClelland & Stewart for Canadian rights, and FSG for US rights.



Barrowman signed the deal after reading a 20-page outline of Catton’s planned novel, and called the plot “archetypal” and “pacy”.



“Ellie told me a while ago she was reading Lee Child and I see that in there, but also with all of her imagination and ethical concerns and ability to conjure up magic,” he said.



“I have total confidence in her as a writer and a person and the book she is going to write.”



The proposed plot of Catton’s book comes on the back of a series of high-profile news articles detailing the plans of billionaire Americans who have purchased bolt-holes in New Zealand.



The controversial purchase of a prime piece of South Island land overlooking Lake Wanaka by Trump advisor and Pay Pal co-founder Peter Thiel also generated heated debate in the country, when it was revealed Thiel bypassed the overseas investment office approval for the sale by gaining New Zealand citizenship in 2011, despite not meeting the regular requirements.



Barrowman said Catton was “dismayed” by the Brexit referendum and Trump’s presidential win, but the themes of her new novel were ideas and concerns he had heard her discuss “for a couple of years”.



“I don’t know how long or where the specifics of her inspiration emerged from but I can see the concerns and the themes in the outline going back to things that I have heard her talk about for a couple of years now,” said Barrowman.



“I have read the recent press stories and noticed myself as a publisher how the best writers and especially the younger writers are plugging into these concerns. Someone has coined a new term for this fiction, Cli-Fi, for climate fiction.”



Since winning the booker Catton has taken a hiatus from writing, and revealed she suffered months of depression in 2015, in which she found herself unable to leave the house.



At the end of last year Catton told Paperboy magazine that she’d been reading a lot of dictionaries and encyclopedias to learn about more “practical things” - including knot-tying techniques and how to build a raft, in preparation for a novel set in the “immediate future”.



“I’m thinking about writing something set in the immediate future, actually, I’ve been thinking in that way for a long time,” she told the magazine.



“I often think about how reliant I am as a person on technological apparatus, which means I never actually have to know how to do anything. So reading these homesteading manuals is quite interesting. I was just learning yesterday, for instance, how to cure olives using lye to remove the tannins. I never knew that.”



“I find survivalists very tiresome. I think there is a lot of misanthropy in a lot of environmentalism that I find really grates on me. I don’t like the stance that human beings are evil, and this kind of arrogance that you’re going to be the one who survives, and lord it over all the stupid people.”



A BBC adaption of The Luminaries written by Catton is due to begin filming on the West Coast of New Zealand this year.

