Ink in the Blood

During the summer after Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, she fell very ill. Just how ill is described in her extraordinary hospital diary, orginally published in the London Review of Books.

Originally published in the London Review of Books, this diary by the acclaimed author Hilary Mantel explores in forensic detail her loss of dignity, her determination, the concentration of the senses into an animalistic struggle to get through, and the attendant hallucinations she was plagued by during her stay in hospital.

With her health now improved, and the acknowledgement of the Man Booker prize-winning follow-up to Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies as one of our greatest works of fiction, Ink in the Blood remains a significant testament to the traumas of illness, and one of the most incredible and haunting essays published in a very long time.