“I don't feel like literature has the power to alienate. I think that's something people feel if they don't connect with a work of art. But I don't think a work of art can actively reject the person who's looking at it or reading it.”

New Zealand novelist and screenwriter, born in Canada

Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter, born in Canada. She moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch, later studying creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal, began as her master’s thesis and was published in 2008. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making her the youngest winner of that prize and only the second New Zealander to receive it. The novel was later adapted as a television miniseries, with Catton writing the screenplay. In 2023, she was named to Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list.