Hillary Mantel won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall. Mantel was the favorite but she beat out J.M. Coetzee and A.S. Byatt. Wolf Hall is an historical novel about Henry VIII’s court from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell, who was Henry VIII’s executor. This is the first time since 2002, when a favorite won the Booker Prize when it went to Yan Martel for The Life of Pi.
Accepting the award, Ms. Mantel said, “I had to interest the historians, I had to amuse the jaded palate of the critical establishment and most of all I had to capture the imagination of the general reader.”
This was the first time Mantel was nominated for the Booker Prize and she is already working on a sequel to the award winning novel.
