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The Vintner's Luck

An unconventional novel which engages grand and glorious themes on an intimate, human scale. 
 
Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

This is a gorgeous novel: as fine, rich, satiny and unpredictable as the vintages that it describes

Ms Knox's philosophical scheme defies brief summary: like a witty, post-modern Milton, she rewrites the Christian myth and the whole cosmology of "Paradise Lost"

A beautifully written exploration of the inexplicable, into which is woven an all-too-human chronicle of burning desire, violence, murderousness, bitter jealousy, curiosity, sexual deviations, shame and a fidelity of a sort

Knox comprehends the irredeemable sadness of loss and, more than any writer I have read for years, manages to touch the heart by paring sophistry and digression from the essential cores of her characters. Beautifully written, The Vintner's Luck possesses a complex bouquet of conceits and ideas but it is the simplicity of Elizabeth Knox's writing that in the end draws out the savour of human experience and compassion

A strange book, both whimsical and deeply ambitious

The nearest useful comparison to Knox's conceptual framework is Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, which also explores social power and control in the context of other possible quantum universes

Elizabeth Knox is the author of five books, including the international success Black Oxen, but The Vintner's Luck was the first to be published outside her native New Zealand. It met great critical and popular success, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and turned into a film in 2009. She is married and lives with her family in Wellington.

Burgundy, 1808. One night Sobran Jodeau, a young vintner, meets an angel in his vineyard: a physically gorgeous creature with huge wings that smell of snow, a sense of humour and an inquiring mind. They meet again every year on the midsummer anniversary of the date. Village life goes on, meanwhile, with its affairs and mysteries, marriages and murders, and the vintages keep improving - though the horror of the Napoleonic wars and into the middle of the century, as science marches on, viticulture changes, and gliders fly like angels. 
 
Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Billie's Kiss

'The Vintner's Luck heralded the arrival of a beguiling writer - Billie's Kiss is just as vividly written, and is an intelligent mix of history of relish for character' Sunday Times

Elizabeth Knox is the award-winning New Zealand author of The Vintner's Luck and Black Oxen, both of which have had international success. She lives in Wellington with her husband and son.

With an Edwardian twist on The Tempest, and all the surprising, earthy and magical qualities of The Vintner's Luck, Knox's irresistible new novel is set on the remote, divided Scottish island of Kissack and Killing, one half of which looks historically and geographically towards Catholic Ireland, the other towards the Protestant north and Scandinavia. In the spring of 1903 a ship explodes as it docks on the island, drowning many of the passengers and crew in the icy waters of Stolnsay harbour. Young, strawberry-blond-haired Billie Paxton is among the only survivors. Clumsy, illiterate and suddenly alone, Billie will not say why, before the explosion, she jumped from ship to shore, and so falls under the immediate suspicion of her fellow passenger, Murdo Hesketh and his cousin and employer, Lord Hallowhulme, who owns the island - and has controversial plans for improving the lives of its inhabitants. Gloriously inventive and vividly atmospheric, Billie's Kiss conjures up a way of life hurtling towards a brave new world, in an enchanting novel that combines a strange, sexy love story with an Edwardian mystery, bringing together murder and eugenics, progress, prejudice and the loss of innocence.

Elizabeth Knox

Hollywood, 1929. While Conrad Cole is working late on elaborate plans for his aeroplanes and his films, a mysterious stranger appears at his door. Xas soon finds himself caught up in the glamorous and treacherous world of movie-making and entangled with both Cole and a young woman who owes her life to the eccentric director. 
 
Both of them are drawn to Xas without knowing his secret - that under his shirt he hides the remnants of great snowy wings that set him apart from humankind, and that he is destined to wander the earth forever, always hearing the beating of feathers behind him, threatening him that his dark brother has found him again.

Elizabeth Knox

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