Hilary Mantel wins the Booker

Congratulations to Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2009 Man Booker prize for her majestic Wolf Hall. Densely researched and beautifully written, this is a book full of intensely observed and deeply absorbing characters. The rise of Thomas Cromwell from abused urchin to advisor to the king is re-imagined here with skill and warmth. Even as he schemes against Katherine of Aragon and sends Thomas More to his death, the reader loves him for his (albeit strategic) compassion for the ill-favoured princess, Mary, and the loving chaos of his family life. With the proliferation of history and fiction that feeds our seemingly insatiable appetite for Tudor history, it is hard to think of any book that could match the faultless prose of this master storyteller.

Read Hilary Mantel in Granta 101, Granta 63: ‘Beasts’ and Granta 56: ‘What Happened to Us?