Youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize announced

Eleanor Catton from New Zealand is the youngest winner of Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries. She received £50,000.

15:20 16 October 2013

New Zealand’s Eleanor Catton, the 28-year-old author of the novel The Luminaries, has been crowned the youngest winner of Man Booker Prize.

Catton was announced as the winner at London’s Guildhall on Tuesday night. Her book, which runs 832 pages, tells the story of 19th-century goldfields during New Zealand gold rush. The judges have dubbed it “Kiwi Twin Peaks” when it was shortlisted last month.

Robert Macfarlane, chair of the judges said: "It's a dazzling work. It's a luminous work. It is vast without being sprawling.”

"You begin it and you think you are in the clutches of a big baggy monster. He described the novel as "accelerating, quickening tilt to the narrative".

He added: "We have returned to it three times now and we have dug into it - to use its own metaphors - and the yield it has offered at each new reading has been extraordinary.”

The Duchess of Cornwall has presented the prize and was announced live on the BBC News Channel.

As winner, Catton receives £50,000.