There are certain shining similarities between China?s Mo Yan and UK?s Hilary Mantel. Mo enjoys enormous circulation within his country, with reports that he is ?one of the country?s richest authors despite lost revenue from literary piracy?. Mantel?s Tudor trilogy is enjoying singular success: after winning the Man Booker in 2009, its first volume Wolf Hall went on to become the fastest-selling winner in the prize?s history. And this summer, the second volume Bring Up the Bodies topped the hardback bestseller list within three days. Now it has won Mantel another Man Booker! Expect super sales even for the final volume. What will the critics who slammed Mo?s prize as political, claiming his historical fiction is escapist vis???vis the realities of China today, say of Mantel?s prize? Not much, it seems. We haven?t heard outcries of royalist pandering in the year of lavish celebrations for the diamond jubilee of the UK?s current queen, very much a relation of the Anne Boleyn whose life, marriage and execution provides the central dramatic spectacle for Bring Up the Bodies. Double standards aside, the notable trend is ?histo-tainment? surmounting its second-rung status, with the venerable History Today also initiating reviews of historical fiction soon after the publication of Wolf Hall. As Mantel has written, ?Unless we plead on our knees with history, we are done for, we are lost.? And yet, cultural amnesia remains the rule rather than the exception, with Mo and Mantel offering revolutionary counterpoints that insist upon the present tenseness of the past.
Do you imagine mid-sixteenth century England in prehistoric terms? Do you think that women didn?t grasp their privations at a time when King VIII was treating himself to six wives? That the Secretary charged with procuring these wives didn?t feel the charge of also budgeting for charity and justice, better roads and bridges that didn?t collapse. That gossip was any less potent before any tabloids were around. Mantel has a tale and more for you.
