One of the most anticipated novels of 2020 finally has a cover.
The jacket for Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, the final book in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the English statesman and aide to King Henry VIII, was revealed on Monday by publisher Henry Holt and Company.
“With The Mirror the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies,” the publisher said in a news release. “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.”
Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were two of Mantel’s most critically acclaimed novels. Reviewers for Kirkus praised the former as “masterfully written and researched” and the latter’s “inventiveness.” Both novels won Man Booker Prizes, and they were adapted into a BBC miniseries in 2015, starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damian Lewis as King Henry VIII.
Fans of the books have been waiting a long time for the final installment in the trilogy—Bring Up the Bodies was published in 2012.
The Mirror the Light is slated for publication on March 10, 2020.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas–based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
