Hilary Mantel wins $43K Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Mirror and the Light
Vicky Qiao | | Posted: June 22, 2021 1:44 PM | Last Updated: June 22, 2021
Hilary Mantel has won the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Mirror and the Light, the final novel in her bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
The prize is given to the previous year's best work of historical fiction published in English. It is open to novels published in the previous year in the U.K., Ireland or the Commonwealth.
Mantel will receive a £25,000 ($43,042 Cdn) prize and take part in a Borders Book Festival event in November, in celebration of her and in honour of Walter Scott's 250th anniversary.
This is the second time Mantel has won this award. The first book in her trilogy, Wolf Hall, won the inaugural Walter Scott Prize in 2010.
In The Mirror and the Light, Mantel traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power in 16th century Europe.
The final book completes Cromwell's journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.
"With consummate technical skill married to the keenest ear for dialogue and the sharpest eye for rich and telling detail, Hilary Mantel resettles the reader at Thomas Cromwell's shoulder for a psychodrama that begins and ends with a blade," said the judges in a statement.
Mantel is a British writer and two-time winner of the Booker Prize — for Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. Her work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories.
The Mirror and the Light was also a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize.
"I'm so happy personally that The Mirror and the Light has won this recognition," Mantel said.
"It was certainly the hardest thing I've ever done, and I know the author isn't always the best person to judge, but it seems to me to be the strongest of my trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell."
Founded in 2019, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction honours the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel. It is sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch.
No Canadian has ever won the prize, but Patrick deWitt, Esi Edugyan, Eleanor Catton and Michael Ondaatje have all been nominated in previous years.