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Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel’s novel set in Jeddah, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, is published by HarperPerennial. Her latest, Wolf Hall, will be out this year.

From the London Review dated 24 January 2008

That Wilting Flower

  • Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained edited by Una McGovern  Buy this book

What an enticing prospect: A-Z elucidation, or at least the admission in print that most of life’s pressing questions are never answered. But won’t all the entries begin with ‘W’? Where has youth gone? Why dost thou lash that whore? Why are you looking at me like that? And of course the question that trails us from playgroup to dementia ward: well, if you will go on like that, what else did you expect? But of course we’re not dealing with that kind of unexplained. The clue is on the cover: a person with popping eyes, flying through the air. This dictionary’s greatest fans will be people more interested in the exception than the rule, and often, it must be said, ignorant of what the rule is. [ read more . . . ]

Selected bibliography

  • Wolf Hall (2009)
  • Beyond Black (2005)
  • Learning to Talk: Short Stories (2003)
  • Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir (2003)
  • The Giant, O'Brien (1998)
  • An Experiment in Love (1995)
  • A Change of Climate (1994)
  • A Place of Greater Safety (1993)
  • Fludd (1989)
  • Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988)
  • Vacant Possession (1986)
  • Every Day Is Mother’s Day (1985)

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In the LRB archive

Someone to Disturb · 1 January 2009

subscriber-only content Diary: In the Waiting Room · 14 August 2008

Frocks and Shocks · 24 April 2008

subscriber-only content Story: ‘Offences against the Person’ · 20 March 2008

That Wilting Flower · 24 January 2008

  • Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained edited by Una McGovern  Buy this book

Saartjie Baartman’s Ghost · 20 September 2007

  • When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of Aids in South Africa by Didier Fassin, translated by Amy Jacobs and Gabrielle Varro  Buy this book
  • The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight against Aids by Helen Epstein  Buy this book

The Real Price of Everything · 21 June 2007

If you’d seen his green eyes · 20 April 2006

  • Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr

What He Could Bear · 9 March 2006

Is the particle there? · 7 July 2005

  • A Game with Sharpened Knives by Neil Belton

I have washed my feet out of it · 21 October 2004

  • Hustling Is Not Stealing: Stories of an African Bar Girl by John Chernoff  Buy this book
  • Exchange Is Not Robbery: More Stories of an African Bar Girl by John Chernoff  Buy this book
  • Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  Buy this book

Some girls want out · 4 March 2004

  • The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint by Rudolph Bell and Cristina Mazzoni
  • Saint Thérèse of Lisieux by Kathryn Harrison
  • The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problems of Puberty by Helen King
  • A Wonderful Little Girl: The True Story of Sarah Jacob, the Welsh Fasting Girl by Siân Busby

subscriber-only content Diary: Hilary Mantel meets her stepfather · 23 October 2003

Is it still yesterday? · 17 April 2003

  • The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury

subscriber-only content Memories of Catriona · 6 February 2003

subscriber-only content Little Miss Neverwell · 23 January 2003

Giving up the Ghost · 2 January 2003

The Shape of Absence · 8 August 2002

  • The Bondwoman’s Narrative: A Novel by Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates

subscriber-only content The dead are all around us · 10 May 2001

  • Hellish Nell: Last of Britain’s Witches by Malcolm Gaskill

subscriber-only content How Shall I Know You? · 19 October 2000

‘What a man this is, with his crowd of women around him!’ · 30 March 2000

  • Robespierre edited by Colin Haydon and William Doyle

Not currently in the LRB archive

 not available in archive Fatal Non-Readers · 30 September 1999

  • The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette by Chantal Thomas, translated by Julie Rose

 not available in archive The National Razor · 16 July 1998

  • The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution by Dominique Godineau, translated by Katherine Sharp

 not available in archive Number One Id · 19 March 1998

  • The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

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