New Zealand author Eleanor Catton wins 2013 Booker Prize

LONDON: New Zealand author Eleanor Catton on Tuesday became the youngest winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction, claiming the award for her novel "The Luminaries".

Catton, 28, picked up the 2013 prize at a ceremony at London's Guildhall, becoming only the second New Zealander to win the prestigious award.

The novel, described as a "Kiwi Twin Peaks", follows fortune-seeker Walter Moody during the New Zealand gold rush of the mid-1800s.

Chairman of judges Robert Macfarlane described the 832-page book, the longest work ever to win the prize, as "dazzling".

"The Luminaries is a magnificent novel," he said. "Awesome in its structural complexity, addictive in its storytelling and magical in its conjuring of a world of greed and gold.

"The maturity of this work exists in every sentence, indeed every sentence, and you are astonished by its knowledge and its poise."

Prince Charles's wife the Duchess of Cornwall presented Canadian-born Catton with the £50,000 ($80,000, 60,000-euro) prize, widely recognised as Britain's highest literary honour. (AFP)