The Luminaries Wins NZ Book Award for Fiction
MA in Creative Writing graduate Eleanor Catton's Booker-winning second novel also won the People's Choice category.
Eleanor Catton has won both the Fiction and People’s Choice categories of the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards with her second novel, The Luminaries (Victoria University Press/ Granta UK, 2013).
An astrological murder mystery set in the West Coast town of Hokitika during the 1860s Gold Rush, The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize and the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 2013.
The judging panel of this year's NZ Post Book Awards was convened by broadcaster Miriama Kamo and includes acclaimed New Zealand artist, Dick Frizzell; award-winning Radio New Zealand presenter Kim Hill; poet and novelist Elizabeth Smither; and literary critic Peter Simpson.
The panel described The Luminaries as ‘sprawling, brilliant; there's a virtuosity to the work that affirms every accolade, that justifies all praise. Eleanor Catton is an extraordinary writer who has conducted a bold experiment and, in the tradition of great and celebrated risk-takers, it has paid off richly.’
The Poetry Award went to current NZ Poet Laureate Vincent O'Sullivan for his latest collection Us, then, also published by VUP. The winners of the previously announced Best First Books of Fiction and Poetry, Amy Head and Marty Smith, both also published by VUP, received their awards at the ceremony.
Read the press release or download the 2014 NZ Post Book Awards Judges' Reportpdf942KB.