The Mirror and the Light

The Mirror and the Light is the bestselling sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel. It follows Thomas Cromwell's rise to power and explores his relationship with Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. The book was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction. It is praised for its vivid portrayal of 16th-century England and its exploration of themes of power, loyalty, and identity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 912 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2021
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

The Sunday Times bestseller, Shortlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction, Longlisted for the Booker Prize, 'It is a book not read, but lived,' Telegraph. 'Her Cromwell novels are, for my money, the greatest English novels of this century,' Observer. The bestselling sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy. '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 springs 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 m.

Weight: 634g
Dimension: 198 x 130 x 55 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780007481002