The Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust, in conjunction with the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) offers one of the largest monetary prizes for literature in the country with two awards of $10,000.

'Through Jito's spiritual journey which threatens the validity of everything he knows and holds dear, the novel becomes a vivid and challenging examination of the holistic nature of faith and its importance to humanity,' she said. It's a journey of faith, Mrs MacLean said. 'Jito struggles to reconcile this with his roles as spiritual leader, husband and father, and the meaning of faith in the world and wider universe while his village is threatened by climate change.' While adjusting to life confined within the compound, he discovers much he has previously taken for granted, is mistaken. ' leaves his family and his occupation to undertake the traditional role of protector, entering the protector's compound to guard the unspecified 'that which is most sacred in this world',' she said. ‘Endlessly rewarding, it is a shining example of the moral and imaginative possibilities of fiction.It is a tale about a young man called Jito who lives in a small desert and who is appointed as protector of the village. Murmur is a fully achieved literary experiment, digging deep into all the dimensions of human consciousness, including state sanctioned savagery.’ Deborah Levy It is also a novel forged from an immensely beautiful writing intelligence. ‘Murmur is a novel of multiple ideas, which seems right given its main protagonist, Alec Pryor, is loosely based on the predicament of the philosophical mathematician, Alan Turing. Formally audacious, daring in its intellectual inquiry and unwaveringly humane, Will Eaves’s new novel is a rare achievement. Taking its cue from the arrest and legally enforced chemical castration of the mathematician Alan Turing, Murmur is the account of a man who responds to intolerable physical and mental stress with love, honour and a rigorous, unsentimental curiosity about the ways in which we perceive ourselves and the world. Whether he intended this or not, Will Eaves has given us a future classic and for this, we are grateful to him.” Every sentence, each character… is well-thought, beautifully written and yet there is a quiet modesty all the way through that is impossible not to admire. By the time you finish the book you might fall in love with not only the story and the storytelling, but with the exquisite craft behind it. Chair of the judges, Elif Shafak said: “Murmur is a hugely impressive book that will grip you in the very first pages, break your heart halfway through, and in the end, strangely, unexpectedly, restore your faith in human beings, and their endless capacity for resilience.

The Time Stealers by Glynne MacLean