Description:
In a near-future Paris reshaped by climate urgency, environmental engineer Diane Griffith draws on innovations in vertical agriculture to help design an ambitious model of green urban life meant to heal both city and planet. As the project transforms Paris's historic core, unanswered questions arise - about care, responsibility, and what sustainable progress truly requires. The search for her missing activist sister forces Diane to engage with those questions. Told alongside the future perspective of her niece Lou, who must live with and fight within Diane's legacy, The Hunger of Those Who Built It asks who gets to inherit tomorrow's utopia.
Brief description:
Wendy Waring grew up within earshot of the steel mills of Hamilton, Canada, earned her BA in Translation from Queens and PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. She worked as an editor in feminist publishing, lived in Paris, moved to Australia, and has taught in universities worldwide. Her publications include academic works, criticism, and short fiction and translations in SFF and literary venues. The Hunger of Those Who Built It is her first novel.
Review Quotes:
"The title of The Hunger of Those Who Built It is a quote from Ursula Le Guin, and this smart, plausible, moving eco-thriller shows Wendy Waring working in the grandly ambitious political and intellectual tradition of Le Guin, making sense of our past and our possible futures. I was riveted by this all-too-believable tale of post-apocalyptic struggle between corporate overlords and undercover radicals, which also manages to work as a heartfelt family drama and a love letter to Paris." - Emma Donoghue, author of ROOM
"Paris, 2049. Snowstorms, flooded streets, greenhouse humidity, weathered ancient stone. In this sensual portrayal of ecological collapse, the only hope is to rescue the world from the systems that claim to protect it. Save seeds, remember one another, refuse silence. All the things that we must do now too. 'I'm here for hope, ' declares one of the main characters, early on. And for the hope is exactly why you should read this compelling, lyrical novel." - Tessa McWatt, prize-winning author of The Snag: A Mother, A Forest and Wild Grief