(© Robert Catto)
“The twelve men were united only by the events of the 14th of January, upon which night Anna Wetherell had nearly died, Crosbie Wells had died, Emery Staines had vanished, Francis Carver had sailed away, and Alistair Lauderback had arrived in town.” The “confoundedly peripheral gathering” in which the Scottish fortune-hunter Walter Moody finds himself on 27 January 1866 simply by walking into the smoking room of his hotel is one of the many strengths of The Luminaries, the book that made 28-year-old Eleanor Catton – who will visit Passa Porta on 17 April – the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize. The twelve human puzzle pieces thrown together by fate are meticulously developed and played out in a masterfully orchestrated 800-page lump of pure gold, every detail informed by astrological symbolism. Catton realises that all that glitters only glitters if the setting is dark enough, and therefore the gold-rush-enthused town of Hokitika in New Zealand is inundated with murder, drugs, whoring, the resurrection of the dead, lust for power, and other human pursuits that emerge when the gilding of our society is peeled away. Dark, complex, compelling, rich...stellar!
MEET THE AUTHOR: ELEANOR CATTON 17/4, 20.00, €5/7, Passa Porta, rue A. Dansaertstraat 46, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-226.04.54, www.passaporta.be
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