Birnam Wood (2023) by NZ writer Eleanor Catton is a political thriller.

Birnam Wood is the name of an activist, guerilla gardening group based in Christchurch NZ. The founder, Mira Bunting, makes a financial arrangement with billionaire Robert Lemoine who’s planning to build a bunker to survive the apocalypse – or at least that’s what he tells Mira he’s doing.

The villainous Robert Lemoine was raised in kinship care by his grandparents. He later decides that his immense wealth is his way of avenging himself against his parents and all the others who had lied to him when he was a child. “He had survived to spite them” writes Catton.