A brilliant collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. A brilliant collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Hilary Mantel is one of Britain’s most accomplished and acclaimed writers. In these ten bracingly subversive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, summoning forth the horrors so often concealed behind everyday façades. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in ‘Comma’; nurses clash in ‘Harley Street’ over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game. Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road in Greece, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel’s unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers. Hilary Mantel is one of Britain’s most accomplished, acclaimed and garlanded writers. Uniquely, her last two novels, Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, both won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. In this new collection of ten stories, all her gifts of characterisation, observation and intelligence are once again fully on display. With settings ranging from Saudi Arabia to Greece to London, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers. ‘An exhilarating, if dark, collection … ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ is a small triumph: a lesson in artfully controlled savagery’ Sunday Times ‘Remarkably good: taut, engaging and shocking … acutely observed’ Evening Standard ‘I would recommend the brilliantly chilling …The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher over most other long or short works this year.’ Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘What a fabulously nasty concoction Hilary Mantel has served up … It’s a fugu fish of a book; parts of which will leave you dizzily elated, while other parts may make you very ill indeed … The venom is distilled, bottled and dripped like slowly staining bitters into the cocktail of the entertainment … That title story, wickedly good, is alone worth the price of admission to the book’ Simon Schama, Financial Times ‘The best stories in the collection … combine sharp observation and sly wit with a subtle burrowing into the recesses of her protagonists’ heads. The darker stories recall both the metaphysical speculations of Jorge Luis Borges and the trickery of Roald Dahl’ Mail on Sunday ‘Infused with Mantel’s almost lush evocations of isolation and distress … All in all, these are alluring portraits of interior disquiet’ Observer ‘No one else quite sounds like Mantel in this vein, although a top-level summit of Muriel Spark and Alan Bennett might conceivably come close. Mantel takes absolutely nothing on trust. Bodies can, and will, malfunction; ditto minds, and marriages. Malice, power or simple chance may always undermine the ground beneath your feet’ Independent ‘These are the sticky slices of suburban noir that Mantel served up so well in her pre-Wolf Hall output and they never fail to deliver’ The Times ‘Much of Mantel’s glorious power comes from her unsentimental, forensic gaze and willingness to describe the uncomfortable … Mantel’s brutally dissecting eye is much in evidence here … Her prose is sublime … the glittering details exquisite’ Independent on Sunday Hilary Mantel is the author of seventeen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, the memoir Giving Up the Ghost and the short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Her latest novel, The Mirror & the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, while Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were both awarded the Booker Prize. • Hilary Mantel is the first British author to have won two Booker prizes, the only woman to have done so and the only writer to have won with two consecutive novels. • Wolf Hall is the most successful Booker winner since records began, selling over 200,000 copies in hardback, and 600,000 copies in paperback, in the UK alone. • Hilary Mantel is now recognised as one of our very finest authors. • Guaranteed blanket feature and review coverage. Competition: The;Wolf Hall;Bring up the Bodies;Testaments;Handmaid’s Tale;Dutch House;Big Sky;Second Sleep;American Dirt. By;Hilary Mantel;Margaret Atwood;Philippa Gregory;Bill Bryson;Robert Harris;John le Carre;Alison Weir;Sebastian Barry;Kate Atkinson
Publicat de: HarperCollins Publishers