The Luminaries
The Luminaries is the second novel by Eleanor Catton, published by Victoria University Press in August 2013 and Granta on 5 September 2013. On 15 October it was announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize. It is the longest book (at 832 pages), and Catton the youngest author (at age 28), ever to win the award.
Catton described the novel as "a kind of weird sci-fi fantasy thing."
Plot
The plot follows Walter Moody, a prospector who travels to the fledgling West Coast of the South Island settlement of Hokitika, near New Zealand's goldfields in 1866 to try to make his fortune. Instead he stumbles into a tense meeting between twelve local men, who draw him in to the complex mystery behind a series of unsolved crimes.
Structure
Each of the twelve men who comprise the council in the first chapter of the book is associated with one of the twelve zodiac signs. The title of a chapter in which one of these men plays a major role is likely to contain that man's sign. The associations are as follows:
