Announcing Sarah Holz as CTBC's January Guest
Historical novels with tinges of magical realism? Sign me up!
I’m thrilled to announce Sarah Holz as Comp Title Book Club’s next guest author.
Join us for a live craft and book club discussion on January 13 at 2 p.m. Eastern. Register here!
I’ve known Holz and had the pleasure of working as her line editor on a number of historical novels, from the God’s Wife series, a retelling of the late Ptolemy dynasty, to her most recent and forthcoming novel, The Gourd and the Stars, about a mute French doctor with albinism who was sent to care for King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, quite cruelly referred to in historical texts as the Leper King because of his Hansen disease.
Join me and Sarah Holz as we read and discuss her comp title, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
Mantel’s Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall is a historical novel of epic scale, exploring the court of King Henry VIII in the advent of the Church of England, told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell during his rise to power at court. The novel has been adapted into a stage play by the Royal Shakespeare Company and into a BBC series starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell. Its sequels would go on to be listed for and, in one case (Bring Up the Bodies), win the Booker Prize again. For all of this pomp and circumstance, Wolf Hall is written in a third-person, present-tense narrative and is remarkably accessible, much like Sarah’s first-person, present-tense novels. I can’t wait to discuss it with her!
As always, you can catch the recording a few days afterward on this Substack, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts. More on this to come, so subscribe to this Substack for real-time updates!