Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up The Bodies, won the Man Booker prize in 2009 and 2012. Her newest book is the short story collection, The Assassination Of Margaret Thatcher.

From the author's Q & A with Carole Burns:

How did you become fascinated by Thomas Cromwell?

It was the very singular arc of his story: blacksmith's son to Earl of Essex, poor boy to king's right-hand man. It has a strong archetypal quality to it. You want to know: What kind of man could achieve that and stay at the top of Henry's court of predators, be close to the king for some eight years before disaster struck? And during those eight years, he helped reshape the nation.

Your depiction goes against the prevalent image of Cromwell as a ruthless despot.

Cromwell's role was explored intensively by academic historians, but people's imaginations are not shaped by scholars; they're shaped by popular historians and fiction writers. And of course, Thomas Cromwell had really fallen victim to Robert Bolt and "A Man for All Seasons," and we see him emerge in a very bad light. Even though I would say there can be other ways of thinking, my interpretations are valid; they're not plucked out of the air. It's not that I was looking for a hero. I was looking to explore a very complex man who was flawed and equivocal and ambiguous, and I'm not big on...[read on]

Mantel's Wolf Hall made Ester Bloom's top ten books for fans of the television series House of Cards, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Kathryn Williams's reading list on pride, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of books on baby-watching in Great Britain, Julie Buntin's top ten list of literary kids with deadbeat and/or absent dads, Hermione Norris's 6 best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best cardinals in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on dangerous minds and Lev Grossman's list of the top ten fiction books of 2009, and is one of Geraldine Brooks's favorite works of historical fiction; Matt Beynon Rees called it "[s]imply the best historical novel for many, many years."

--Marshal Zeringue