Why did I love this book?
This is the first in a trilogy, and the whole series is excellent, but you have to start at the beginning. Wolf Hall is a reading experience unlike any other. Mantel’s masterful command of prose and her willingness to use language in unusual ways completely enmeshes the reader in a dream-like sense of being actually inside the mind of a 16th-century man—Thomas Cromwell, the central figure of the series. It can be a little tricky to read the first time you tackle it, so I recommend the audiobook version, which is superbly narrated.
20 authors picked Wolf Hall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
`Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good' Daily Mail
'Our most brilliant English writer' Guardian
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.
Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with…