Hilary Mantel up for third Booker prize as 2020 longlist announced

Author of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy vies with 12 other contenders in a field marked by a high number of debuts

Hilary Mantel’s “masterful” conclusion to her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, has been longlisted for the Booker prize, putting the British novelist in the running to win for an unprecedented third time.

Mantel’s 900-page novel, which opens after Anne Boleyn has been beheaded in 1536, and traces the final years of Cromwell, is one of 13 novels in the running for this year’s £50,000 prize. Judges chaired by publisher Margaret Busby said that Mantel’s “masterful exhibition of sly dialogue and exquisite description brings the Tudor world alive”.