October 7, 2009
Novel About Henry VIII Wins Booker Prize
By MOTOKO RICH

Hilary Mantel won the 41st annual Man Booker Prize on Tuesday night for “Wolf Hall,” a historical novel about Henry VIII’s court centered on the king’s adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s ceremony at the Guildhall in London, Ms. Mantel, 57, was the overwhelming favorite, with the bookmakers William Hill giving “Wolf Hall” odds of 10-11, the shortest odds ever for a nominee.

Ms. Mantel beat out the literary lions J. M. Coetzee and A. S. Byatt, both previous winners of the prize, and deprived Mr. Coetzee of the chance to become a three-time winner of the award. She was the first favorite to win since Yann Martel won for “Life of Pi” in 2002.

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.”

James Naughtie, a BBC broadcaster who led the panel of judges, described “Wolf Hall” as “a thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century,” praising it for the way it “probes the mysteries of power by examining and describing the meticulous dealings in Henry VIII’s court, revealing in thrilling prose how politics and history is made by men and women.”

Mr. Naughtie revealed that the decision was not unanimous and that the five-judge panel was split this year 3 to 2 in favor of “Wolf Hall.” In a report on the Web site of the Guardian newspaper, guardian.co.uk, Mr. Naughtie said the panel’s decision “was based on the sheer bigness of the book, the boldness of its narrative and scene-setting, the gleam that there is in its detail.”

The Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, is conferred every year to a novel written by an author from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth nations. The award comes with a check for about $80,000 and usually results in a bump in sales. Last year’s winner, “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga, for example, has sold 236,000 copies in paperback in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales. “The Gathering” by Anne Enright, which won in 2007, has sold 300,000 paperback copies.

Ms. Mantel, who has written 10 novels, a collection of short stories and a memoir, spent five years writing “Wolf Hall” and is already working on a sequel. This was her first time being nominated for the Booker Prize.

“Wolf Hall,” published by Fourth Estate in Britain and Henry Holt & Company in the United States, was widely praised among reviewers. Writing in The New York Times on Monday, Janet Maslin said the book’s “main characters are scorchingly well rendered,” adding that “their sharp-clawed machinations are presented with nonstop verve in a book that can compress a wealth of incisiveness into a very few well-chosen words.”

And in The Sunday Telegraph of London, Lucy Hughes-Hallett wrote that Ms. Mantel “makes that world at once so concrete you can smell the rain-drenched wool cloaks and feel the sharp fibers of the rushes underfoot.”

The Booker Prize was perhaps most notable this year for its lack of controversy. In previous years, details of the judges’ deliberations have been catnip for London’s literary society and the shortlists have often been scrutinized as much for who is left off as for who is included. This year, several heavyweights — and former winners — were left off the long list of finalists, but that was largely viewed as a measure of the strength of the year’s offerings in literary fiction.

The shortlist of finalists for the award were Ms. Byatt for “The Children’s Book,” ; Mr. Coetzee for “Summertime,” Adam Foulds for “The Quickening Maze,” Simon Mawer for “The Glass Room,” and Sarah Waters for “The Little Stranger.”