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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
direction
From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea.
coming experience identity lucky questions struck tend women
In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them.
actively art connect literature looking people power reading reject work
I don't feel like literature has the power to alienate. I think that's something people feel if they don't connect with a work of art. But I don't think a work of art can actively reject the person who's looking at it or reading it.
amplified car cheerfully either fact family injustice owning quite thank
My sense of injustice about our family's 'weirdness' in not owning a car was amplified by the fact that we did not own a television, either - my parents were unapologetic about this and told me very cheerfully that I would thank them for it when I was older, which was quite true.
describing historical rushes second though zealand
My second novel, 'The Luminaries,' is set in the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s, though it's not really a historical novel in the conventional sense. So far, I've been describing it as 'an astrological murder mystery.'