The Luminaries

Resumen del libro

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk.

Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. It is full of narrative, linguistic and psychological pleasures, and has a fiendishly clever and original structuring device.

Written in pitch-perfect historical register, richly evoking a mid-19th century world of shipping and banking and goldrush boom and bust, it is also a ghost story, and a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement and will confirm for critics and readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament.

Biografía del autor

Eleanor Catton (Ontario, Canadá, 1985) se trasladó a vivir con su familia a Nueva Zelanda a la edad de 6 años. En 2007 obtuvo un máster en Escritura Creativa, y su primera novela El ensayo general, escrita como tesis de graduación para el máster, fue premiada con el Adam Award, obteniendo un gran éxito entre la crítica y los lectores de Nueva Zelanda, que fue extendiéndose a Gran Bretaña y EE.UU. Tanto su primera obra como la segunda, Las luminarias, han sido traducidas a los principales idiomas y han recibido importantes galardones internacionales, destacando el Man Booker Prize por Las luminarias.