• 
• 

New Zealand author Eleanor Catton has won the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her book The Luminaries.

The 28-year-old is the youngest winner for the longest novel, 832 pages, in Man Booker Prize history. 

She is only the second New Zealander to win the prize, with Keri Hulme winning for her novel The Bone People in 1985.

New Zealand author Eleanor Catton has won the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her book The Luminaries.

The 28-year-old is the youngest winner for the longest novel, 832 pages, in Man Booker Prize history. 

She is only the second New Zealander to win the prize, with Keri Hulme winning for her novel The Bone People in 1985.

The Duchess of Cornwall presented Catton with the award at London's Guildhall today. She takes away a 50,000 pound (NZ$95,000) award.

The chair of judges Robert Macfarlane described the book as a “dazzling work, luminous, vast”. It is, he said, “a book you sometimes feel lost in, fearing it to be 'a big baggy monster', but it turns out to be as tightly structured as an orrery”.

The other shortlisted authors were Colm Toibin (The Testament Of Mary), Jhumpa Lahiri (The Lowland), NoViolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names) and Ruth Ozeki (A Tale For The Time Being).

The Luminaries was published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press in August 2013 and Granta in London. Read the opening chapter here.

The novel, set in Hokitika during the gold rush of 1866, is described as an ‘astrological murder mystery’.

New Zealand publisher, Fergus Barrowman of Victoria University Press, who attended the prize ceremony in London, says he is thrilled at Catton’s triumph.

“We are delighted for Ellie and for the further international recognition the Man Booker Prize will bring The Luminaries. It’s a big ambitious book written by a fearlessly intelligent and talented writer. It’s a novel for readers who love great storytelling and it’s wonderful that the judges have chosen to recognise that with this illustrious prize.”

Victoria University Press say the book has been selling extremely well since and is now onto its fifth print run.

Catton's debut novel The Rehearsal won the Adam Prize and was Best First Book of Fiction at the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Internationally, it was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize, and won the 2009 Betty Trask Award. It has been published in 17 territories and 12 languages.

Catton was born in 1985 in Canada and raised in Christchurch New Zealand.  She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she also held an adjunct professorship, and an MA in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. She lives in Auckland.