
It is 1866 & Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields On arrival he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes A wealthy man has vanished a whore has tried to end her life & an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk Moody is soon drawn into the mystery a network of fates & fortunes that is as complex & exquisitely patterned as the night sky The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction It is full of narrative linguistic & psychological pleasures & has a fiendishly clever & original structuring device Written in pitch-perfect historical register richly evoking a mid-19th century world of shipping & banking & goldrush boom & bust it is also a ghost story & a gripping mystery It is a thrilling achievement & will confirm for critics & readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament