Mantel wins

To quote the Guardian: 'Hilary Mantel wins the 2009 Booker prize for her fictionalised life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall.'

Her victory is all the more impressive because this year's shortlist was widely seen as one of the strongest in years and included former winners JM Coetzee and AS Byatt.

Naughtie said the "ridiculous" odds of 16-1 originally given to Wolf Hall when the longlist was announced probably led to the betting bonanza. After the shortlist was announced the novel became easily the fastest seller, accounting for 45% of all the shortlisted books' sales, according to Amazon, although Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger has sold more overall.

Naughtie said the voting process had been spirited and friendly. "There was no blood on the carpet. We parted good friends. When we gathered this morning none of us knew which book was going to win," he said. "I think we all felt exhausted at the end of the process but there was real feeling that we had found a book that was worthy of the prize."

Mantel said she has started work on the sequel to Wolf Hall, which will be titled The Mirror And The Light. "What I have got at the moment is a huge box of notes," she added.

So there you go: you now know which book we'll be reading for the week 11 class. You can see what I thought of it by going to the sidebar (to the right) and scrolling down to the links gathered under the heading '2009 Man Booker Shortlist reviews'; but I'm more interested in your response. Seek it out, in the local public libraries, in bookshops and amazon. Have a read