“We were talking nonsense, and I said something silly about unrequited love, and he became very serious, and he stopped me, and he said that unrequited love was not possible; that it was not love. He said that love must be freely given, and freely taken, such that the lovers, in joining, make equal halves of something whole.”

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.