Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries on the Man Booker Shortlist

Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries is one of six novels to be selected for the Man Booker Shortlist.

The winner of the prize will be announced on the 15th October.

The Luminaries, published by Granta, is Eleanor's second novel. It takes us back to the New Zealand goldfields of 1866, where Walter Moody has come to make his fortune.  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.