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
above excited form gap generation people quite radically second seems terms writers zealand
There are a lot of people of my generation in New Zealand literature, young writers on their first or second books, that I'm just really excited about. There seems to be a big gap between the generation above and us; it seems to be quite radically different in terms of form and approach.
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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.
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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.
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I believe really strongly in imitation, actually: I think it's the first place you need to go to if you're going to be able to understand how something works. True mimicry is actually quite difficult.
novels
When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!'
built cared patterns structural
What I wanted to create with 'The Luminaries' is a book that had structural patterns built in that didn't matter, but if you cared about them, you could look into the book and see them.
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I'm the rogue Canadian in my family - I just happened to be born here while my parents were studying here.
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I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.
writers
I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.
The zodiac is a system a person can play with and see meaning in.
defining humans
The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.
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My father is an expatriate American; he fell in love with New Zealand in his youth and never went home.
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I would draw a really sharp distinction between creating and producing. I think that they're very different things.
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I have always loved reading books for children and young adults, particularly when those books are mysteries.