The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel

Hilary Mantel

Macmillan, Jun 12, 2007 - Fiction - 208 pages

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

In her acclaimed novel, two-time Man Booker Prize winning author Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of Ireland and England. As belief wrestles knowledge and science wrestles song, so The Giant, O'Brien calls to us from a fork in the road as a tale of time, and a timeless tale.

Contents

• Section 1: 3
• Section 2: 19
• Section 3: 21
• Section 4: 25
• Section 5: 56
• Section 6: 102
• Section 7: 121
• Section 8: 177
• Section 9: 192

About the author

Hilary Mantel twice won the Booker Prize, for her best-selling novel Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won critical acclaim around the globe. Mantel authored over a dozen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, and the memoir Giving Up the Ghost.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel
• Author: Hilary Mantel
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2007
• ISBN: 0312426887, 9780312426880
• Length: 208 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Historical / General; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / World Literature / England / 20th Century