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WINNER: THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2012. Bring Up the Bodies continues the vivid tale of the life of Thomas Cromwell and is the sequel to the Man Booker Prize 2009-winning Wolf Hall.
'My boy Thomas, give him a dirty look and he'll gouge your eye out. Trip him, and he'll cut off your leg,' says Walter Cromwell in the year 1500. 'But if you don't cut across him he's a very gentleman. And he'll stand anyone a drink.' By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church.
But Henry's actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king's pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a 'truth' that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne's final days.
In Bring up the Bodies Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. This new novel is a speaking picture, an audacious vision of Tudor England that sheds its light on the modern world. It is the work of one of our great writers at the height of her powers.
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.
'Picks up the body parts where Wolf Hall left off ... literary invention does not fail her: she's as deft and verbally adroit as ever' Margaret Atwood, Guardian 'Bring Up The Bodies succeeds brilliantly in every particle of this: it's an imaginative achievement to exhaust superlatives' The Spectator 'Historical novel? Of course, and probably the best to be published since Wolf Hall ' Andrew Motion, The Times 'Mantel's genius in the retelling of this oft-told tale is her knack of reaching inside people's heads into the nooks and crannies of their thoughts, seeing what many others don't ... I hesitate to use the term 'genius' but ...' Kathy Stevenson, Daily Mail 'Bring Up The Bodies should net its author another Booker Prize' Amanda Craig, New Statesman 'Where much historical fiction gets entangled in the simulation of historical authenticity, Mantel bypasses those knots of concoction, and proceeds as if authenticity were magic rather than a science. She knows that what gives fiction its vitality is not the accurate detail but the animate one, and that novelists are creators, not coroners, of the human case ... In short, this novelist has the maddeningly unteachable gift of being interesting.' James Wood, The New Yorker '...a magnificent encore from first page to last' Mail on Sunday 'An outstandingly good read ... Fans of 'Wolf Hall' will relish this book, but Bring Up the Bodies also stands alone' The Economist 'This is a great novel of dark and dirty passions, public and private. It is also an exploration of what still shocks us... A truly great story, it rolls on.' James Naughtie, FT 'There is no sense in which Bring Up the Bodies is a simple follow-up or continuation of Wolf Hall. More then most, Mantel is a committed revolutionary novelist' TLS
