Mantel wins Booker in split vote

The historical novelist Hilary Mantel has captured the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, described by the Times as a “650-page doorstopper about political manoeuvring at the court of Henry VIII.”

The prize jury split three-to-two between Mantel’s novel and another book that James Naughtie, the jury’s foreman, declined to name. Wolf Hall beat out Sarah Waters’s Little Stranger, my own favorite, along with A. S. Byatt’s Children’s Book and J. M. Coetzee’s Summertime.

In the Guardian, Claire Armistead regrets the awarding of the prize, saying ruefully that Mantel’s loyal readers “have always regarded her as our secret.” As someone who enjoys a well-researched historical novel—a genre that often performs the job of reenacting history better than academic historiography—I have to say that the Booker has accomplished its goal of creating at least one new reader for its prize-winner.

Wolf Hall has yet to be released in this country, however.