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The Rehearsal

Brief Description
As a rumour spreads about a teacher sleeping with a student, a group of teenage girls are jolted into new awareness of their own vertiginous sexuality. Ripples move outward in unexpected directions: the saxophone teacher directs the girls in rehearsing their desires, and the local drama... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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The debut novel from the Booker Prize–winning author ofΒ The LuminariesΒ andΒ Birnam Wood.

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As a rumour spreads about a teacher sleeping with a student, a group of teenage girls are jolted into new awareness of their own vertiginous sexuality. Ripples move outward in unexpected directions: the saxophone teacher directs the girls in rehearsing their desires, and the local drama school adapts the scandal for a show.

Every action is a performance, and every platform a stage. The boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve – or perhaps they were never there.

Boldly inventive, unsettling, and exhilarating, The Rehearsal is a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd exposΓ© of emotional compromise. It reveals the singular daring that has defined Catton’s career.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781776923311

Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 09 July 2026

Country: New Zealand

Imprint: Te Herenga Waka University Press

Edition: New edition

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 352

About the Author

Eleanor Catton is the author of The Luminaries (2013), winner of the Booker Prize, the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award, and the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal (2008), won the New Zealand Best First Book of Fiction Award and the Betty Trask Prize, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Birnam Wood (2023) was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. As a screenwriter, Catton adapted The Luminaries for television, and Jane Austen’s Emma for feature film. Born in 1985 in Canada and raised in New Zealand, she lives in Britain.

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