The Garden

This novel is based on the life of Linnaeus, the eighteenth-century Swedish enlightenment figure famous for his taxonomy, the scientific classification still used in biology. It principally concerns the different ways Linnaeus and his gardener interpret the world around them. The gardener perceives plants for what they are in themselves and Linnaeus for what they are in relation to other things. They never understand each other and the dialogues are wonderfully inconclusive.