Another gong for Mantel
HILARY Mantel has become the first British writer to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction twice after her novel Bring up the Bodies was named the best book of the year.
The 60- year- old writer, who won in 2009 for the first part of her historical trilogy, Wolf Hall, was named the winner at a ceremony in London yesterday.
Accepting her prize she said: ‘‘Well I don’t know, you wait 20 years for a Booker Prize and two come along at once.’’
She said she regarded the award as an ‘‘act of faith and a vote of confidence’’.
Peter Stothard, who chaired the judging panel, said the book, which forms the second part of Mantel’s trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, ‘‘ utterly surpassed’’ the first volume.
‘‘ She uses her power of prose to create moral ambiguity and the real uncertainty of political life, political life then and the pale imitation of political life now,’’ he said.