Hilary Mantel Wins Second Booker Prize

In 2009 Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize for her extraordinary novel Wolf Hall. Today, after one of the most exciting shortlists of recent times, she is now the first woman and the first British author to win the prestigious award twice. But for those who think this is history repeating, think again. Though equal in mastery to its predecessor, Bring Up the Bodies is a darker, tighter and more brutal novel. It is 1535 and Thomas Cromwell has made Anne Boleyn his queen. But Anne’s cards are marked, the King’s attentions have again begun to wander, and as Cromwell manipulates the Queen’s downfall he also sets the stage for his own. Bring Up the Bodies is a more ravenously political novel than Wolf Hall, one which provides troubling insights into our contemporary obsessions with power, manipulation, and surveillance. As Cromwell moves from puppet-master to torturer and finally executioner, of the innocent as well as the guilty, the novel comes – more menacingly than the first – to inhabit the dark shadows of our present. This time Cromwell’s coattails leave crimson streaks on the flagstones.

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel is published by Fourth Estate.