2 January 2023
Eleanor Catton is sticking up for entertaining the reader. "Escapism gets framed as though it's an abdication of responsibility-like, who's reading novels while the world is burning?-but actually, what kind of world do we want? One where people are reading." Ten years on from The Luminaries, the labyrinthine epic set in gold rush New Zealand that made her the youngest-ever Booker Prize winner, Catton returns with her third novel, a satirical contemporary thriller destined to set 2023 ablaze.