MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER

«The lights is a real feat. Eleanor Catton has constructed a lively parody
of a nineteenth century novel, and in doing so she has created a work for the twenty-first century, something absolutely new.
The Cultural

«The lights is a real feat. The pages fly between the fingers as a universe opens and closes before us and the human soul reveals itself to us in all its despair and conflict.
The New York Times Book Review

On a stormy day in January 1866, the prostitute Anna Wetherell is arrested. A fact that could well go unnoticed in the middle of the gold rush that runs through the New Zealand coast, if it were not for the other three mysterious events that also take place that same day: a huge fortune is discovered in the house of a drunkard Without resources, a wealthy man disappears without a trace and a captain suddenly suspends all his dealings and lifts anchor ... They are all connected to Anna, none of them seem to have an explanation.

The meeting of the twelve most powerful men in the city to clarify the extraordinary sequence of events and the sudden entrance on the scene of the young Walter Moody will set in motion an implacable machinery of destiny and fortunes, as complex and well enmeshed as that of the stars in the celestial vault.