Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009, 604 pages, 1448 KB)

I must be one of the last people to get around to reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (UK, 1953).   It won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, among other awards.   The sequel to this novel, Brings up the Bodies (a third work in the sequence is expected) won the 2012 Man Booker Prize.

Wolf Hall is fictionalized biography of an important figure in the court of King Henry VIII of England, Thomas Cromwell.   There are lots of  book blog posts on this novel and over 700 Amazon reviews so I will not add to this  volume very much.  Much of the plot action of the book centers around the king's wish for a divorce.   It follows carefully the facts of Cromwell's life and lets us see how the court and the clerics worked and interacted.   It is set in the 1520s.

This is universally regarded as first rate historical fiction and I will just say I agree with the consensus.  I hope to read Brings Up the Bodies in 2013.