Mantel’s Wolf Hall Wins 2009 Man Booker

Hilary Mantel’s historical novel set in 16th-century Britain has won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate) is the story of Thomas Cromwell’s rise in the Tudor court. The book has also been the bookies’ favorite since the announcement of the Man Booker longlist back in July. The longlist was reduced to a shortlist in September.

The Man Booker Web site points out that this is the first time a book published by Fourth Estate has won the Man Booker, although three of its books have previously been shortlisted: Nicola Barker’s Darkmans in 2007; and two from Carol Shields, Unless in 2002 and The Stone Diaries in 1993.

Here are the other books shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Award:

• The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt (Random House, Chatto and Windus)
• Summertime by J.M. Coetzee (Random House, Harvill Secker)
• The Quickening Maze by Adam Fould (Random House, Jonathan Cape)
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (Little, Brown)
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Little, Brown, Virago)