Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mary Mantel, born Thompson in Glossop, Derbyshire, in 1952, was the first of three children of Irish descent. Her parents divorced when she was eleven, and her mother remarried, leading her to take the surname of her stepfather, Jack Mantel. Her childhood, as she recounts in her memoir "Giving Up the Ghost" (2003), was marked by a pervasive sense of fear. She studied law at the London School of Economics and the University of Sheffield. In 1977, she followed her husband, geologist Gerald McEwen, to Botswana and later to Saudi Arabia. It was in Botswana that she began writing her first novel, "Every Day is Mother's Day," which was published in 1985 and established her international reputation. That same year, she returned to the United Kingdom, where she continues to reside. Hilary Mantel is considered one of the most important contemporary British authors and has been repeatedly honored for her work. She is the first female author in history to be awarded the Man Booker Prize twice (in 2009 and 2012) for her novels about the figure of Cromwell, "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies."