Wolf Hall: A Novel

Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Set in 1520s England, the novel follows Thomas Cromwell as he navigates a political crisis. King Henry VIII seeks to annul his twenty-year marriage to marry Anne Boleyn, but the pope and most of Europe oppose him. If the king dies without a male heir, civil war could destroy the country. Cromwell is a complex figure—charming yet bullying, idealistic yet opportunistic, skilled at reading people and driven by ambition. He helps Henry break the opposition to his plans, but his success comes with uncertain consequences. The novel explores Cromwell's position in a volatile court where the king's moods shift between tenderness and violence.