Wolf Hall wins National Book Critics Circle award

Mantel one of several British authors honoured at US awards

11 March 2010

 The National Book Critics Circle announced its award winners today (11 March 2010) for the publishing year 2009 at the New School's Tishman auditorium in New York. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2009, won the fiction award. The board saw it as ‘an extraordinary accomplishment, original in voice and ambitious in style, that brings us into intimate contact with a compelling Cromwell.'

Speaking to The Guardian about Wolf Hall's continued success in the US, Mantel said, "Initially my US publishers were a little surprised about what I was going to do next, but they've been very supportive. I was very surprised, if you look at internet sites, at how many Tudor fanatics there are in the US."

Other British winners included Richard Holmes and Diana Athill.

Mantel is currently working on the sequel to Wolf Hall. "Ever since the Booker I haven't had a couple of sequential days to write," she said.
Mantel's recent success in New York comes hot on the heels of the UK release of Wolf Hall in paperback and an enhanced ebook for iPhone.

This week Wolf Hall has also been topping The Bookseller's mass market fiction chart in the UK, the first time a Booker winner has achieved this since records began in 1998.

The National Book Critics Circle 

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