Hilary Mantel

THE FINAL BOOK FROM ONE OF OUR GREATEST WRITERS In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Her subjects are wide-ranging, sharply observed, and beautifully rendered. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life popping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels—revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England; and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V.S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health that she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is her legendary essay “Royal Bodies,” on our endless fascination with the current royal family. From her unusual childhood to her all-consuming interest in Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall trilogy, A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel’s life in her own luminous words, through “messages from people I used to be.” Filled with her singular wit and wisdom, it is essential reading from one of our greatest writers.

Hilary Mantel's seventh novel examines the pressures on women during the 1960s to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status. Pushed by a domineering mother, Carmel McBain climbs her way through the pecking order and ends up at London University as an acquiescent and undernourished teenager, achieving the status so desired by her mother, but too weak to make use of it or pose a threat to anyone. Though this is Carmel's story, it reflects on a generation of girls desiring the power of men, but fearful of abandoning what is expected and proper.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearIt was the year after Chappaquiddick, and all spring Carmel McBain had watery dreams about the disaster. Now she, Karina, and Julianne were escaping the dreary English countryside for a London University hall of residence. Interspersing accounts of her current position as a university student with recollections of her childhood and an ever difficult relationship with her longtime schoolmate Karina, Carmel reflects on a generation of girls desiring the power of men, but fearful of abandoning what is expected and proper. When these bright but confused young women land in late 1960s London, they are confronted with a slew of new preoccupations--sex, politics, food, and fertility--and a pointless grotesque tragedy of their own.Hilary Mantel's magnificent novel examines the pressures on women during the early days of contemporary feminism to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status.

Capturing the violence, tragedy, history, and drama of the French Revolution, this novel focuses on the families and loves of three men who led the Revolution--Danton, the charismatic leader and orator; Robespierre, the cold rationalist; and Desmoulins, the rabble-rouser.

Colette and Alison are unlikely cohorts: one a shy, drab beanpole of an assistant, the other a charismatic, corpulent psychic whose connection to the spiritual world torments her. When they meet at a fair, Alison invites Colette at once to join her on the road as her personal assistant and companion. Troubles spiral out of control when the pair moves to a suburban wasteland in what was once the English countryside. It is not long before the place beyond black threatens to uproot their lives forever. This is Hilary Mantel at her finest--insightful, darkly comic, unorthodox, and thrilling to read.

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0805090037 (ISBN13: 9780805090031) Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?

1520. Inglaterra está a un paso del desastre. Si el rey muere sin un heredero varón, la guerra civil amenaza con destruir el país. Tras veinte años de matrimonio, Enrique VIII quiere divorciarse de Catalina de Aragón y casarse con Ana Bolena. Pero la oposición del papa y de la mayoría de las coronas europeas es tajante, y el rey, enfurecido, pone al límite al cardenal Wolsey, que no consigue el beneplácito de Roma. En este clima de acechanza y necesidad llega a la corte Thomas Cromwell, al principio como segundo de Wolsey y más tarde como su sucesor. Ejemplo del hombre nuevo del Renacimiento que esbozara Maquiavelo, hijo de un herrero que lo maltrató brutalmente, genio político, corrupto, encantador y fanfarrón, Cromwell es un hombre fascinante, cuyo vertiginoso ascenso al poder rompe todas las reglas de una sociedad rígida e inmovilista, un político habilísimo que se enfrenta al Parlamento, a la nobleza, a la clase política, al papa, y perfila una Inglaterra a su medida y a la de los deseos del rey. Un rey que fluctúa entre las pasiones románticas y las pulsiones asesinas... Galardonada con el Premio Booker, En la corte del lobo no es sólo una soberbia novela histórica sobre los Tudor, sino que, con una perspectiva absolutamente contemporánea, recrea en una de las etapas más convulsas de la historia de Europa el vívido y cautivante espectáculo de la depredación humana.

This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780007172894. One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop. Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action. Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.

New York Times bestselling author Hilary Mantel, two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize, is one of the world’s most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers. Giving Up the Ghost, is her dazzling memoir of a career blighted by physical pain in which her singular imagination supplied compensation for the life her body was denied. Selected by the New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years “The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me.” In postwar rural England, Hilary Mantel grew up convinced that the most extraordinary feats were within her grasp. But at nineteen, she became ill. Through years of misdiagnosis, she suffered patronizing psychiatric treatment and destructive surgery that left her without hope of children. Beset by pain and sadness, she decided to “write herself into being”―one novel after another. This wry and visceral memoir will certainly bring new converts to Mantel’s dark genius. “Mesmerizing.”― The New York Times

A dazzling collection of short stories from the two-time winner of the Booker Prize and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Wolf Hall trilogy. In the wake of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, Learning to Talk is a collection of loosely autobiographical stories that locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Absorbing and evocative, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village “scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.” For the young narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In “King Billy Is a Gentleman,” the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. “Curved Is the Line of Beauty " is a story of friendship, faith and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In “Third Floor Rising, " she watches, amazed, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity. With a deceptively light touch, Mantel illuminates the poignant experiences of childhood that leave each of us forever changed. “A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat...Mantel’s narrators never tell everything they know, and that’s why they’re worth listening to, carefully.” ― USA Today “Her short stories always recognize other potential realities...Even the most straightforward of Mantel’s tales retain a faintly otherworldly air.” ― The Washington Post

A stunning collection of essays and memoir from twice Booker Prize winner and international bestseller Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books , she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of twenty reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades, tells the story of what happened next. Her subjects range far and Robespierre and Danton, the Hite report, Saudi Arabia where she lived for four years in the 1980s, the Bulger case, John Osborne, the Virgin Mary as well as the pop icon Madonna, a brilliant examination of Helen Duncan, Britain’s last witch. There are essays about Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, Christopher Marlowe and Margaret Pole, which display the astonishing insight into the Tudor mind we are familiar with from the bestselling Wolf Hall Trilogy. Her famous lecture, ‘Royal Bodies’, which caused a media frenzy, explores the place of royal women in society and our imagination. Here too are some of her LRB diaries, including her first meeting with her stepfather and a confrontation with a circus strongman. Constantly illuminating, always penetrating and often very funny, interleaved with letters and other ephemera gathered from the archive, Mantel Pieces is an irresistible selection from one of our greatest living writers.

HILARY MANTEL is one of Britain's most accomplished and acclaimed writers. In these ten bracingly transgressive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, ushering concealed horrors into the light. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in 'Comma'; nurses clash in 'Harley Street' over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game. Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road on a Greek island, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel's unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.

HILARY MANTEL is one of Britain's most accomplished and acclaimed writers. In these ten bracingly transgressive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, ushering concealed horrors into the light. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in 'Comma'; nurses clash in 'Harley Street' over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game. Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road on a Greek island, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel's unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearLos Angeles Times Best Book of the Year London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge. In her acclaimed novel, two-time Man Booker Prize winning author Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of Ireland and England. As belief wrestles knowledge and science wrestles song, so The Giant, O'Brien calls to us from a fork in the road as a tale of time, and a timeless tale.

“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?” England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion, and courage.

Estamos em 1535. Henrique 8º, o volúvel monarca da Inglaterra, ainda não tem um filho para legar a Coroa. Reis sem herdeiros jamais se sentem seguros em seus próprios tronos, e Henrique acaba por projetar a culpa pela crise sucessória em sua segunda esposa, Ana Bolena. O coração do monarca agora pertence a Jane Seymour. Ocorre que os parentes e amigos de Ana estão espalhados por altos cargos do reino, e os desejos do rei podem mergulhar a Inglaterra no caos político. Quem desataria esse nó? Mais uma vez, os rumos da Inglaterra serão traçados por Thomas Cromwell, ministro que arquitetou a separação entre a Inglaterra e a Igreja de Roma. Também foi ele quem alçou Ana Bolena ao trono inglês ― e agora terá de levar sua antiga aliada ao cadafalso. Em Tragam os corpos ― continuação de Wolf Hall ―, Hilary Mantel retrata o lado mais implacável de seu fascinante protagonista, cujas contradições fazem deste livro uma extraordinária reflexão sobre as ambiguidades do poder ― e o terrível custo a ser pago por aqueles que inscrevem seus nomes nas entrelinhas da História.

Alison Hart, medium van beroep, toert met haar listige assistente Colette door de troosteloze slaapstadjes rond Londen. Samen vormen ze een onwaarschijnlijk duo: de een is een verlegen, nuchtere, maar sluwe bonenstaak, de ander een charismatische, corpulente helderziende wier verbinding met de spirituele wereld haar kwelt. Ze geeft boodschappen door van geliefde doden. Maar achter haar mollige, geruststellende verschijning gaat een wanhopige vrouw schuil, want ze kent de verschrikkingen die het volgende leven inhoudt, maar moet die verbergen voor haar klanten. Tegelijkertijd wordt ze geplaagd door kwelgeesten uit haar eigen verleden, die haar lichaam en huis infiltreren en steeds sterker en gemener worden naarmate ze zich meer verzet...

A two-ebook edition of Hilary Mantel' s bestselling novels: Wolf Hall, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009, and Bring Up the Bodies, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the first two instalments in Hilary Mantel' s Tudor trilogy, have gathered readers and praise in equal and enormous measure. They have been credited with elevating historical fiction to new heights and animating a period of history many thought too well known to be made fresh. Through the eyes and ears of Thomas Cromwell, the books' narrative prism, we are shown Tudor England, the court of King Henry VIII. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. In Wolf Hall we witness Cromwell' s rise, beginning as clerk to Cardinal Wolsey, Henry' s chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. He is soon to become his successor. By 1535, when the action of Bring Up the Bodies begins, Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry' s second wife. Anne' s days, though, are marked. Cromwell watches as the king falls in love with silent, plain Jane Seymour, sensing what Henry' s affection will mean for his queen, for England, and for himself.

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

אנגליה בתחילת המאה השש-עשרה עומדת על סף אסון. אם המלך ימות בלי יורש זכר, תיקרע הממלכה לגזרים במלחמת אחים. לפיכך, מבקש הנרי השמיני לבטל את נישואיו לקתרינה מאראגון ולהתחתן עם אן בולין למרות התנגדות האפיפיור והתנגדותם של רוב שליטי אירופה. הניסיון להשיג למלך את החירות המבוקשת ממיט חורבן על הקרדינל וולזי, יועצו הבכיר של המלך, ונפילתו מותירה חלל שלטוני. לתוך המבוי הסתום הזה נכנס תומס קרומוול – בנו של נפח אלים, שנהפך לעורך דין, בריון שופע קסם, פוליטיקאי גאוני שהתקשח בגלל האובדן הקשה שספג בחייו האישיים. אך המלך הפכפך: לרגע הוא נדיב ורגיש, ולרגע הוא אנוכי ורצחני. קרומוול מסייע לו לשבור את מתנגדיו ולהשיג את מבוקשו, אבל מה יהיה מחיר הניצחון הזה?

ในยุคสมัยที่อังกฤษต้องคำสาป กษัตริย์ตกอยู่ภายใต้การปกครองของศาสนจักร องค์ราชาเฮนรีต้องการแต่งงานกับแอนน์ โบลีน และยกให้แอนน์เป็นราชินีของอังกฤษ แต่ติดขัดตรงที่องค์ราชาได้อภิเษกสมรสกับราชินีแคเธอรีนแห่งสเปนแล้ว ทอมัส ครอมเวลล์จำต้องล้มล้างการแต่งงานเดิม และฉวยโอกาสนี้พลิกเปลี่ยนแผ่นดิน ผ่องถ่ายอำนาจที่ศาสนจักรเคยกุมชะตาไว้มาอยู่ในมือของกษัตริย์อังกฤษ พบกับการพลิกผันครั้งใหญ่ของแผ่นดินอังกฤษ ที่จะเปลี่ยนโฉมหน้าการปกครองประเทศไปตลอดกาล ด้วยกลที่แยบยลดั่งคำกล่าวที่ว่า "ประเทศปกครองด้วยลูกคิด หาใช่คมดาบไม่"

เหยี่ยวร่วงหล่นจากฟากฟ้า มหาอำมาตย์ทอมัส มอร์ โดนประหารแล้ว ราชินีแคเทอรีน โดนถอดจากบัลลังก์ แอนน์ โบลีน ขึ้นแท่นเป็นราชินีองค์ใหม่แห่งอังกฤษ ทว่าไม่สามารถมอบโอรสให้กษัตริย์เฮนรีได้ ไม่ช้าไม่นาน ข้าราชการแบ่งฝักแบ่งฝ่ายเป็นสองพวก คือ “คนของพระราชา” และ “คนของพระราชินี” ทอมัส ครอมเวลล์ ได้รับมอบหมายให้ล้มล้างการแต่งงานขององค์ราชาอีกครั้ง เขาดำเนินการสืบเสาะและรีดเค้นข้อมูลทุกอย่าง กล่าวหาแอนน์ โบลีน ว่าคบชู้สู่ชายและร่วมประเวณีในสายเลือด การล้างแค้นให้กับคาร์ดินัลวูลซีย์ เจ้านายเก่าที่รักยิ่งของเขามาถึงแล้ว แต่การล้างแค้นครั้งนี้จะพาทอมัส ครอมเวลล์ไปสู่สถานะง่อนแง่นเพียงใด