Eleanor Catton

Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand author who won the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in 2013 for The Luminaries, an intricate novel set during the New Zealand Gold Rush of the 1860s. At the time, she was the youngest author ever to win the Man Booker Prize, at age 28. The Luminaries is a structurally complex novel built around astrological patterns, with 12 major characters corresponding to the signs of the zodiac and seven others representing celestial bodies. Its architecture becomes increasingly compressed as the novel progresses, and the book was critically praised for its formal daring alongside its compelling narrative. Catton grew up in New Zealand and studied at the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington. Her debut novel The Rehearsal (2008) was also widely acclaimed. Her second major novel, Birnam Wood (2023), about an anarchist gardening collective in New Zealand, was also widely praised. Catton has lived variously in New Zealand, Canada, and the UK, and is one of the most celebrated voices in contemporary Anglophone fiction.