Eleanor Catton’s dazzling epic has confirmed her as one of the literary world’s brightest rising stars. Her Man Booker Prize-winning second novel is a complex, exquisitely crafted tale of historical intrigue among the goldmines of New Zealand in 1866. Catton’s writing is linguistically astute and cleverly structured. Steven Gale speaks to the youngest winner of this prestigious prize about the extraordinary, ambitious literary accomplishment that is The Luminaries.