Broder

All Broder Bahnsen has ever wanted is to be a farmer, to succeed the father from whom he has inherited his ‘cow sense’, his instinct for animals. But it’s his twin brother Henning, born just a few minutes earlier, who’s destined to inherit the farm. Henning has always been the confident one, but is more interested in machines than in cattle.

Exiled from the farm, Broder creates a counter-life for himself. He becomes a vet and stays away from the family business for more than two decades. When he returns to the area and takes over a practice near the Bahnsen farm, he ends up looking after his brother’s herd too. Henning, meanwhile, has turned their parents’ place into a hyper-modern business with cows bred to maximise milk production.

But success comes at a price, and Broder notices that Henning is beginning to lose control over the farm. Is this what he’s been waiting for all these years? Is this his chance to take his brother’s place? Or has he, like his daughter Claire, started questioning the ethics of breeding cattle in this way?

Broder is a clear-eyed, insightful novel about a world where our fixation on growth finds its limits, and which asks ever more insistently to what extent we’re willing to take responsibility for Creation.