28-year old New Zealand author Eleanor Catton won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for her 848-page novel The Luminaries. She is the youngest winner of the prestigious literary prize, and the second New Zealander (Keri Hulme won in 1985 for The Bone People) and will receive 50,000 pounds or about $80,000. A murder mystery set in 19tKeri h century New Zealand, The Luminaries is “organized into 12 sections named for the signs of the Zodiac.” The Booker Prize, traditionally awarded annually to a novelist from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country, will be opened to Americans in 2014. Read more in today’s New York Times and in this NPR article.
Laura