Thousands of copies of Booker-award novel on back order

New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton.Photo / Sarah Ivey

The Luminaries is in hot demand, with 17,000 copies on back order around the country, after young NZ writer Eleanor Catton became the Booker Prize's youngest winner.

Victoria University Press publicist Kirsten McDougall said about 10,000 copies of the book had sold in stores, with a further 4025 e-book sales.

Ms McDougall said Booker Prize short-lister, The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox, was their best selling book, at over 60,000 copies sold.

"So The Luminaries still has a way to go, although sales greatly accelerated last week after the Man Booker [literary prize] announcement. We expect that in due course, The Luminaries will overtake 60,000.''

Check out all the pictures from the Man Booker Prize ceremony in the gallery below:

Image 1 of 10: New Zealand author Eleanor Catton poses with her book 'The Luminaries'. Photo / AP

Ms McDougall confirmed they were trying to arrange for the 28-year-old winning author to visit Hokitika for a book tour next year.

That would be a return for Catton, who said she always stopped off in the town while en route to Fox Glacier to visit her sister.

The Luminaries is set entirely in goldrush era Hokitika.

Catton said she loved the West Coast for the "drama of the landscape, the drama of the weather, the strange sense of claustrophobia, but also danger, and sheerness, and loneliness".

"I carry the West Coast around with me in a way that's quite different to any other landscape in New Zealand: I feel shaped by it, internally."

Watch Eleanor Catton read an extract from her award winning novel: