by Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel's trilogy follows Thomas Cromwell from a blacksmith's yard in Putney to the closest position of power in Henry VIII's England, and then to the scaffold. Written in the present tense and held tight to Cromwell's point of view, it reads the Tudor court from the inside out: a self-made administrator watching men born to rank make ruinous decisions, and quietly outlasting them until he does not. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies each won the Booker Prize, making Mantel the first author to win for a novel and its sequel, and The Mirror and the Light completed the trilogy in 2020.
