When New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton won the Man Booker Prize in 2013, she became the youngest-ever author of the longest-ever book to take out the literary world’s top award. This double record-breaking achievement might have overshadowed a lesser author, but not Catton, who is as assured and eloquent in discussion as her astonishing novel The Luminaries. The novel has drawn attention for its beautifully realised characters and vivid setting, as well as for the intricately plotted narrative that draws heavily on the zodiac for its elaborate structure. This structure is integral to the novel, but largely invisible for anyone whose knowledge of the zodiac is less encyclopaedic than Catton’s. Her familiarity with the novel’s historical setting, the gold rush town of Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, is no less impressive and I began by asking her about the many attractions of this setting for a novelist.

Zora Sanders: I want to ask you about the attraction of the gold-rush-town setting for The Luminaries. I can’t imagine why anyone would set a novel not in a nineteenth-century gold-rush town, because it’s obviously the best setting you could possibly choose, but what was it about that setting that attracted you?