New Zealander Eleanor Catton wins Booker Prize for fiction

Complexity and heft triumphed at the Booker Prize on Tuesday, as 28-year-old New Zealand author Eleanor Catton won the fiction award for "The Luminaries," an ambitious 832-page murder mystery set during a 19th-century gold rush.

The choice should give heart to young authors of oversized tales. Catton is the youngest writer and only the second New Zealander to win the prestigious award — and her epic novel is easily the longest Booker champion.

Travel writer Robert Macfarlane, who chaired the judging panel, called "The Luminaries" "dazzling" and "luminous."   

"It is vast without being sprawling," he said. "It is beautifully intricate without being fussy ... It is experimental ... but does not by any means neglect the traditional virtues of storytelling."

Catton had been bookmakers' joint favorite among the six prize finalists, alongside British novelist Jim Crace, for his rural parable "The Harvest."

Catton received her trophy, which comes with a 50,000-pound ($80,000) check, from Prince Charles' wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a dinner ceremony at London's medieval Guildhall.

"The Luminaries" centers on a man named Walter Moody who arrives in a New Zealand prospecting town in 1866 and finds himself in a mire of saloons, seances and unscrupulous behavior.

The book's elaborate narrative is structured according to astrological charts: It consists of 12 sections, each half the length of the one before it, from a 360-page opener to a final chapter of a single page.

Macfarlane said the panel of five judges met for two hours — brief by Booker standards — to choose the winner, which was decided without a vote. "No blood was spilled in the judging," he said.

Catton, who was 25 when she started writing the book and 27 when she finished, published just one previous novel. Now she has won a prize that brings a huge boost in profile, publicity and sales and whose laureates include V.S. Naipaul, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes and Hilary Mantel.

The only previous Booker winner from New Zealand is Keri Hulme, who took the prize in 1985 for "The Bone People."

This is the last year that the Booker — founded in 1969 and officially named the Man Booker Prize after its sponsor, financial-services firm Man Group PLC — will be open only to writers from the United Kingdom, other Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland. Beginning next year, Americans and other English-language writers will be able to enter as well.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press