Following up on her Man Booker Prize win last month, Eleanor Catton has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for her second novel, The Luminaries (McClelland & Stewart).
Her winning novel, The Luminaries, is an epic Victorian-era murder mystery, set in the 1860s New Zealand gold rush. In her acceptance speech, the London, Ontario-born Catton discussed the novel’s many influences, from 19th-century European literature to Canadian and U.S. fiction.
The Canada Council for the Arts, which administers the annual literary prize, announced this year’s winners during a ceremony in Toronto. The winner of each category receives $25,000 as well as a specially bound copy of his or her book.
Here is the full list of English-language prize winners:
Fiction: Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries (McClelland & Stewart)
Poetry: Katherena Vermette, North End Love Songs (The Muses’ Company)
Drama: Nicolas Billon, Fault Lines (Coach House Books)
Non-fiction: Sandra Djwa, Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
Children’s Literature, Text: Teresa Toten, The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (Doubleday Canada)
Children’s Literature, Illustration: Matt James, Northwest Passage; text by Stan Rogers (Groundwood Books)
Translation, French to English: Donald Winkler, The Major Verbs (Signal Editions); English translation of Les verbes majeurs by Pierre Nepveu
Have you read The Luminaries or any of this year’s Governor General’s Literary Award winners? Are you planning on picking them up now? Let us know in the comments!
Photo credit: Robert Catto