Bring up the Bodies

Hilary Mantel is one of our most important living writers. She is the author of twelve books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Giving Up the Ghost, Beyond Black, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize, and Wolf Hall, which won the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

'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