Eleanor Catton MNZM (born 24 September 1985) is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. She is related to author Bruce Catton. Catton's debut novel, The Rehearsal, was published in 2008. It was written as her Master's thesis and deals with reactions to an affair between a male teacher and a girl at his secondary school. That year, she was awarded a fellowship to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Catton's second novel, The Luminaries, was published in 2013. The novel is set in the goldfields of New Zealand in 1866. It was shortlisted for and subsequently won the 2013 Man Booker Prize making Catton, at the age of 28, the youngest author ever to win the Booker. Less