We’re the good guys.” That masks a lot in the country. There’s this sense of “Oh c’mon, don’t pick on us. It has participated in world wars, but not to the extent that other countries have. You don’t tell people what goes on at home or something bad will happen to you.Į.C.: There’s a lot of self-exaltation that goes on, because it’s a country that is beautiful, remote and the history is relatively short. I have a huge problem with that, because it’s the logic of an abusive relationship. It was quite fun to refer to him as “Sir Owen” throughout the book…There’s a great sense in New Zealand that if you achieve any international attention or recognition, your job as a New Zealander is to paint the country in the best available light. There’s a character who receives a knighthood at the beginning. He brought back knightships in New Zealand, which had been abolished, in order to give himself one.
I did get some petty revenges in the book. He called me “a fictional writer,” which I hope is written on my tombstone. It took me a long time to realize that that wasn’t going to help the book.Į.C.: I had said that he was neo-liberal and challenged. I had a lot of anger towards New Zealand after that period. I became very depressed and just kind of saddened. It lasted for weeks and weeks, and everybody weighed in. This ignited this national media firestorm that I found quite damaging. He went on breakfast television to tell the nation that I didn’t know what I was talking about and not to listen to me. Right before I had the idea, I had made these quite tepid remarks at a literary festival in India that were astonishingly picked up in my native New Zealand by none other than the prime minister. Is “Birnam Wood” about what has been offending her?Į.C.: This book definitely comes out of a deep dissatisfaction, bordering on rage, that I feel about the impertinence of the contemporary political left and the way that it seems to be tearing itself apart, when there are bigger problems to contend with…I had the idea and title by the beginning of 2017, but it wasn’t until 2020 that I started working on it proper. A novel is hopeful about change, because change is what it’s all about.
They matter because I share in great tragedy. The mistakes we make matter, even if they matter for the worse. Thinking of fiction in terms of optimism and pessimismĮleanor Catton: It is hopeful but not optimistic…there’s something slightly passive about optimism. Here, highlights from subjects discussed during the Q&A. Having written the screenplay for the 2020 Autumn de Wilde film “Emma,” Catton is at work on “a lot” of screenplays at the moment (none of which she could discuss), and her next novel - another thriller set in New Zealand. Any reading activity is a positive thing. When you read a wonderful book and get to the end of it, all you want is to read something else. “I feel broadly in favor of that actually.
Inside Fashion Trust U.S.’s Inaugural Awards
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