Kiwi Books to Films: The Vintner's Luck
Elizabeth Knox is one of New Zealand's most successful contemporary fiction writers. Her writing draws from a variety of genres and she has published several novels for adults and children, as well as autobiographical novellas.
Elizabeth Knox joined ten other Kiwi authors at this years Leipzig Book Fair, part of New Zealand's year of cultural events in Germany as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Knox's early works include the partly-autobiographical novellas Paramata, Pomare, and Tawa, which examine a young girl's childhood and adolescence. In 2000 the trilogy was collected together in one volume, as The High Jump.
Her international breakthrough came in 1998 with her seventh book, the bestselling The Vintner's Luck. This period tale of a French winemaker and an angel which won the Montana Book Awards Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize was bought to the screen by Whale Rider director Niki Caro in 2009.
Filmed in France, Belgium and New Zealand, The Vintner's Luck is a tale of growing grapes, meeting angels and seeking perfection. Belgian actor Jeremie Renier stars as Sobran, a poor winemaker who one day encounters an angel. The two make a pact. One day each year, as Sobran's fortunes wax and wane, the angel returns to hear more about Sobran's life. vwith help from US script consultant Joan Scheckel; the film also reunites Caro with Whale Rider discovery Keisha Castle-Hughes, who plays Sobran's wife.
