The brilliant #1 New York Times bestseller
Named a best book of 2020 by The New York Times, The Washington Post,
TIME, The Guardian, and many more
With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant
close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning
novels, 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 man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict,
passion and courage.
The story begins in 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, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The
blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's 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, a man with only his wits to rely on, 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 the breaking
point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of
the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and
religious reform. But as fortune's wheel turns, Cromwell's enemies are
gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can
anyone survive under Henry's cruel and capricious gaze?
Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light
completes Cromwell's journey from self-made man to one of the most
feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos
and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a
politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied
and defined his age.
