“In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected.”

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.