Hilary Mantel Wins a Second Booker Prize

Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Hilary Mantel

LONDON â€" - The novelist Hilary Mantel won the 2012 Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for “Bring Up the Bodies,” the second book in her trilogy about the life and machinations of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister and master manipulator.

Set over the course of the year 1535, it tells of the reign and rapid demise of Anne Boleyn, Henry's ill-fated second wife, through the eyes of Cromwell, who all but orchestrated her downfall.

“You wait 20 years for a Booker Prize; two come along at once,” said Ms. Mantel upon accepting the award. She won the Booker in 2009, too, for the first book in the trilogy, “Wolf Hall.”

The Man Booker Prize i s awarded annually to a novel written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, Ireland, or the Commonwealth. Much of literary London put on black tie and gathered for a formal dinner at the grand Guildhall to hear the winner announced; the BBC broadcast the announcement live.

The prize has been won in past years by some of the biggest names in fiction, including Iris Murdoch, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Kingsley Amis and Salman Rushdie.

This year's shortlist was memorable in part for the books that were left off, including novels by Martin Amis, Michael Frayn, John Lanchester and Pat Barker. However, while two of the authors on the list, Ms. Mantel and Will Self, are very well known, the other four are not.

Sir Peter Stothard, chairman of this year's Booker panel, said the judges had based their choices on “novels, not novelists; texts, not reputations.”

He added: “It was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of la nguage shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigor and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose â€" and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas.”

Other novels on the shortlist included “The Garden of Evening Mists,” by Tan Twang Eng; “Swimming Home,” by Deborah Levy; “The Lighthouse,” by Alison Moore; “The Garden of Evening Mists,” by Tan Twan Eng; “Umbrella,” by Will Self; and “Narcopolis,” by Jeet Thayil.