The Luminaries

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2013 It is 1866 and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished a whore has tried to end her life and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. It is full of narrative linguistic and psychological pleasures and has a fiendishly clever and original structuring device. Written in pitch-perfect historical register richly evoking a mid-19th century world of shipping and banking and goldrush boom and bust it is also a ghost story and a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement and will confirm for critics and readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament. Review The Luminaries is an impressive novelcaptivating intense and full of surprises --Times Literary SupplementThe Luminaries is a breathtakingly ambitious 800-page mystery with a plot as complex and a cast as motley as any 19th-century doorstopper. That Cattons absorbing hugely elaborate novel is at its heart so simple is a great part of its charm. Cattons playful and increasingly virtuosic denouement arrives at a conclusion that is as beautiful as it is triumphant --Daily MailIt is awesomely - even bewilderingly - intricate.Theres an immaculate finish to Cattons prose which is no mean feat in a novel that lives or dies by its handling of period dialogue. Its more than 800 pages long but the reward for your stamina is a double-dealing world of skullduggery traced in rare complexity. Those Booker judges will have wrists of steel if it makes the shortlist as it fully deserves --Evening StandardEleanor Catton is nothing if not ambitious. Her latest novel longlisted for this years Man Booker prize is an 828-page blockbuster.With astonishing intricacy and patient finesse Catton brings to life the anomalous nature of 19th-century New Zealand --Sunday Times Expansive and quite superb. Catton writes with real sophistication and intelligence... with intricate plotting and carefully wrought scenes --Scotsman Every sentence of this intriguing tale set on the wild west coast of southern New Zealand during the time of its goldrush is expertly written every cliffhanger chapter-ending making us beg for the next to begin.The Luminaries has been perfectly constructed as the consummate literary page-turner --Guardian An intellectual deconstruction and a remarkable act of literary ventriloquism that truly feels as if it has been written in the same spirit as its antecedents. Although I felt the need to gallop through the book in pursuit of some answer that would satisfy my increasingly painful curiosity I found myself frequently slowing down to savour Cattons characterisations and gentle wit. The Man Booker judges have really struck gold --Sunday Express For the scale of her ambition and the beauty of its execution somebody should give that girl a medal --Daily Telegraph Carefully executed relentlessly clever easy to read... Catton sustains a human comedy that sweeps through the hope the mud the lies and the secrecy underlying gold fever. It is not so much a morality play as an astute celebration of the power of the story --Irish Times The 2013 Man Booker prize-winner is even in paperback a hefty tome. Cattons irresistibly intricate plot makes the pages fly by.Snappy dialogue crisp humour and grand vision sets this far above its rivals ***** --Daily TelegraphTruly dazzling --Paperback reviewSunday HeraldAn immense feat of structuring and plotting which means that this novel