The 2013 Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Eleanor Catton for her literary mystery The Luminaries, an audacious take on an old form, the Victorian "sensation novel". (More about the book, below.)
The chair of judges Robert Macfarlane describes the book as "dazzling work, luminous, vast". He and his fellow judges were impressed by Catton's technique, but it was her "extraordinarily gripping" narrative that enthralled them.
Eleanor Catton is the youngest Man Booker winner in the prize's history. The book itself, at 832 pages, is the longest winning title.
— ♦ —
The Luminaries
Eleanor Catton
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his 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 prostitute 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.
0 comments:
Post a Comment