Last night Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize, taking a prize worth nearly $80,000 for her novel, "Wolf Hall"--a historical biography about Henry VIII's adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

Last year Aravind Adiga won the annual prize for "The White Tiger." According to The Daily Beast, the judges included (among others) a TV comedian, a literature professor, and a radio reporter.

Here's more from the article: "The winner of literature's prestigious Man Booker gets £50,000 for a work that can take years. It's less than a third of what the Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney (who, I suspect, has never read a novel) gets in a week. Shortlisted candidates pick up a check for £2,500--and a year's free membership in Soho's Groucho Club. Pity the country, to paraphrase Brecht, that needs literary heroes."