The Vintner's Luck

Overview

One summer evening in 1808, Sobran Jodeau stumbles through his family's vineyard in Burgundy, filled with wine and love sorrows. As Sobran sways in a drunken swoon, an angel appears out of nowhere to catch him.Once he gets over his shock, Sobran decides that Xas, the male angel, is his guardian sent to counsel him on everything from marriage to wine production. But Xas turns out to be far more mysterious than angelic. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner's Luck is a decidedly unorthodox love story, one that presents angels as fierce and beautiful as Milton's, and a vision of Heaven, Hell, and the vineyards in between that is unforgettable.The Vintner?s Luck is a huge bestseller in New Zealand. It has sold over 50 000 copies in New Zealand and over 100 000 copies worldwide.The Vintner?s Luck was published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Picador US, and in the UK by Chatto & Windus and Vintage. It has been published in German, Dutch, Norwegian, Spanish and Hebrew. It won the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 1999 The Montana NZ Book Awards, where it also received the Readers' Choice and Booksellers' Choice awards.It was longlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize for fiction (UK) The Vintner?s Luck won the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region Prize, and a film directed by Niki Caro is currently in production.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Knox is the author of 10 novels for adults: After Z-Hour (1987), Treasure, (1992, shortlisted for the 1993 NZ Book Awards), Glamour and the Sea (1996), The High Jump: A New Zealand Childhood (Paremata 1989, Pomare 1994 and Tawa 1998), The Vintner’s Luck (1998), Black Oxen (2001), Billie’s Kiss (2002), Daylight (April 2003) The Angel's Cut (2009), and Wake (2014).The book that Elizabeth is perhaps best known for is The Vintner’s Luck, first published 1998, which was a huge bestseller in New Zealand. It has sold over 45 000 copies in New Zealand and over 100,00 copies worldwide. The Vintner’s Luck was published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Picador US, and in the UK by Chatto & Windus and Vintage.It has been published in German, Dutch, Norwegian, Spanish and Hebrew. It won the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 1999 The Montana NZ Book Awards, where it also received the Readers' Choice and Booksellers' Choice awards. It was longlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize for fiction (UK) The Vintner’s Luck won the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region Prize.Elizabeth has also won several personal awards and fellowships, including the ICI Young Writers Bursary, a Scholarship in Letters (1993) and was the Writing Fellow Victoria University Of Wellington in 1997. Elizabeth Knox was an inaugural recipient of a Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2000. "Elizabeth Knox's achievement is already considerable with the break-through success of The Vintner's Luck," says Arts Foundation panel member and poet Bill Manhire. "We believe she is about to become a major international writer." In 2002 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM).