Additional information
by Hilary Mantel (Author)
New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge. In her acclaimed novel, two-time Man Booker Prize winning author Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of Ireland and England. As belief wrestles knowledge and science wrestles song, so The Giant, O'Brien calls to us from a fork in the road as a tale of time, and a timeless tale.
Front Jacket
The year is 1782; the place, London: centre of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and magnet to the desperately poor-among whom is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature. He is a man of songs and stories who believes in ancient myths. He has come to London to exhibit his size for money. He has also, he discovers, come there to die.
His opposite is a man of science, a society surgeon, the famed anatomist John Hunter, employer of a legion of grave robbers. He lusts after the Giant's corpse. Coin is offered, but the Giant refuses. He will be buried; he will assume his throne in heaven. But money changes hands as friends are bribed. The Giant sickens, dies. Today, his bones may be viewed by any curious stranger who visits Hunter's London museum.
Author Biography
Hilary Mantel was the author of the bestselling novel Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which both won the Booker Prize. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won world-wide critical acclaim. Mantel wrote seventeen celebrated books, including the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, and she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize, the Costa Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize, and many other accolades. In 2014, Mantel was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died at age seventy in 2022.
