Australian novelist Tim Winton has produced a profound tale of a last stab at salvation in ‘Eyrie’

‘If there is a Hell being prepared for me, it will be a dinner party. But I’d like to be in a bar, late at night in New York, with Colm Toibin, Patti Smith, Dickens, St John of the Cross, Toni Morrison, Keats and Emily Bronte, with her brother Branwell leading the singsong while arm-wrestling’

New Zealand author Eleanor Catton is not yet 28, but her second novel is one of the favourites for this year’s Man Booker Prize