Eleanor Catton Becomes Youngest Winner of 'Man Booker Prize' for 'The Luminaries'

Eleanor Catton, 28, is the newest and youngest winner of the Man Booker Prize, for her book "The Luminaries". The ceremony was broadcasted live from Guildhall in London on Tuesday night, The New York Times reported.

"The Luminaries" is a 832-page story set in 19th-century New Zealand and explores identity, greed and human frailty, the Times reported.

Catton, who has been working on "The Luminaries" for three years, was born in Canada and raised in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her first novel, "The Rehearsal," published in 2008, was praised and nominated for various awards, according to the Times.

Some other nominees were "We Need New Names," by NoViolet Bulawayo; "Harvest," by Jim Crace; "A Tale for the Time Being," by Ruth Ozeki; "The Lowland," by Jhumpa Lahiri,; and "The Testament of Mary," by Colm Toibin.

After this year's winner, the Booker Prize, which is Britain's most prestigious literary prize awarded to novelists from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country, will be open to all novels written in English and published in Britain, regardless of the novelist's nationality, the Times reported.

The announcement was made in September and brought criticism from the literary world in Britain who fear it will lose its potential to "discover and anoint" new and unknown authors, the Times reported.

Jonathan Taylor, chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation, wrote in response that "paradoxically it has not been allowed full participation to all those writing literary fiction in English. It is rather as if the Chinese were excluded from the Olympic Games," the Times reported.

Last year, the prize was given to Hilary Mantel for "Bring Up the Bodies," her second Booker victory. She previously won in 2009, for "Wolf Hall," the first book in her planned trilogy about Thomas Cromwell.