Book description
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009
'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More,
'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion
eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.'
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir.
Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce
the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need
comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.
Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a
political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate
and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in
pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics
as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of
a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic
passions and murderous rages.
From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare
thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection
of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of
characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history
to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with
great passion and suffering and courage. “A stunning book. It breaks
free of what the novel has become nowadays. I can't think of anything
since Middlemarch which so convincingly builds a world.” Diana Athill
"A fascinating read, so good I rationed myself. It is remarkable
and very learned; the texture is marvellously rich, the feel of Tudor
London and the growing household of a man on the rise marvellously
authentic. Characters real and imagined spring to life, from the
childish and petulant King to Thomas Wolsey's jester, and it captures
the extrovert, confident, violent mood of the age wonderfully." C.
J. Sansom
"A magnificent achievement: the scale of its vision and the fine
stitching of its detail; the teeming canvas of characters; the style
with its clipped but powerful immediacy; the wit, the poetry and the
nuance." Sarah Dunant
“A superb novel, beautifully constructed, and an absolutely compelling
read. Mantel has created a novel of Tudor times which persuades us that
we are there, at that moment, hungry to know what happens next. It is
the making of our English world, and who can fail to be stirred by it?”
Helen Dunmore Hilary Mantel is the author of thirteen books ,
including A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, BEYOND BLACK, and the memoir GIVING
UP THE GHOST. Her two most recent novels, WOLF HALL and its sequel BRING
UP THE BODIES, have both been awarded The Man Booker Prize - an
unprecedented achievement.
