Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton MNZMis a Canadian-born New Zealand author. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Man Booker Prize. In January 2015, she created a short-lived media storm in New Zealand when she made comments in an interview in India in which she was critical of "neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture."...
NationalityNew Zealander
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth24 September 1985
giving wish human-nature
It is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive.
moving earth london
Astrologys a moving system that depends on where youre looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand.
life clever remember
Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.
favourites graham raymond
In researching 'The Luminaries,' I did read quite a lot of 20th-century crime. My favourites out of that were James M. Cain, Dassiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith.
favourite time
I loved 'Middlemarch,' I think that's one of my favourite books of all time, actually.
impulses quite range states
The nice thing about the zodiac as a system is it is quite comprehensive as a range of impulses and psychological states it can speak about.
highlight printed type
I highlight everything I find interesting, and then type out everything I've highlighted, and then print out everything I've typed, and reread these printed notes as often as possible.
plot structure whether
The challenge that I set for myself was to see whether or not plot and structure could coexist, and why it was that we had to always privilege one above the other.
complement gets great itself renewable social teaching
Teaching is a great complement to writing. It's very social and gets you out of your own head. It's also very optimistic. It renews itself every year - it's a renewable resource.
dignity everybody human moments nature optimistic people products time
I think it's more optimistic about human nature to acknowledge that people are the products of their time but then to see that they have moments of grace and dignity that everybody has.
blanket garage wrap
There was a computer in our garage when I was growing up, and I'd go out there in winter and wrap myself in a blanket and write a story.
handful immersed novels
I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.
countless ears funny reviews sort turn
I've had countless reviews sort that have made me cry. It's funny, it doesn't ever get better either; you can't turn your ears off.
until
An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century.