On a blustery January day, a prostitute is arrested. In the midst of the 1866 gold rush on the coast of New Zealand, this might have gone unnoticed. But three notable events occur on that same day: a luckless drunk dies, a wealthy man vanishes, and a ship s captain of ill repute cancels all of his business and weighs anchor, as if making an escape. Anna Wetherell, the prostitute in question, is connected to all three men. This sequence of apparently coincidental events provokes a secret council of powerful townsmen to investigate. But they are interrupted by the arrival of a stranger: young Walter Moody, who has a secret of his own. THE LUMINARIES is an intricately crafted feat of storytelling, a mystery that reveals the ways our interconnected lives reshape our destinies. - Little, Brown.com
The youngest Man Booker winner in the prize's history (she is 28 but completed The Luminaries aged 27) has triumphed with the longest ever Man Booker winning novel (832 pages). Catton is just the second New Zealander to win the prize, the first being Keri Hulme with The Bone People in 1985. A more important statistic is that earlier in the year there were an extraordinary 151 novelists submitted for the prize and from this rich field of literary wheat hers is the one head that remains standing, waving in the warm breeze of the judges' favour. Life for Eleanor Catton will never be the same again. - TheManBookerPrize.com
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