Hilary Mantel - The Mirror & The Light (New Paperback)
Synopsis
The Mirror & The Light is a historical novel by English writer Hilary Mantel. Following Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), it is the final instalment in her trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, minister in the court of King Henry VIII, covering the last four years of his life, from 1536 until his death by execution in 1540.
"If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?"
England, May 1536.
Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.
Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future.
But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?
With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.
Details
- Format : Thick New Paperback
- Condition : New
- Category : Fiction - Historical Fiction
- Published : 2020 (This Edition 2021 - Fourth Estate)
- ISBN : 9780007481002
- SKU : B002480
- PPC : SP550gm
- RRP : £9.99
- Quantity Available : 1 only.
External Reviews
'Very few writers manage not just to excavate the sedimented remains of the past, but bring them up again into the light and air so that they shine brightly once more before us. Hilary Mantel has done just that.' - Simon Schama, The Financial Times.
'A masterpiece that will keep yielding its riches, changing as its readers change, going forward with us into the future' - The Guardian.
'Ambitious, compassionate, clear-eyed yet emotional, passionate and pragmatic, The Mirror & the Light lays down a marker for historical fiction that will set the standard for generations to come' - The Independent.
'It's the crowning glory of a towering achievement' - The Mail on Sunday.
"Hilary Mantel's Cromwell is a pragmatic, reasonable man whose clear-eyed calm issues from thought. At every turn we have his thoughts before he speaks. The result is an extraordinary blend of the turning external world and the workings of his mind. He is both sympathetic and ruthless, grasping yet generous, the son of a blacksmith and the most efficient man in Europe." - Google Review.
The Author
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, DBE, FRSL is an English writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories.
Featured Author . . . Hilary Mantel
