The Nobel Prize for Literature and the Man Booker Prize for fiction were both awarded to women last week. Herta Müller won the Nobel for Literature and Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize.

Mueller, whose Nobel was seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism's collapse, was persecuted in her native Romania for her critical depiction of life behind the Iron Curtain. Her body of work includes the novels The Appointment, The Land of Green Plums and Traveling on One Leg.

Hilary Mantel won the 41st annual Man Booker prize last Tuesday for Wolf Hall, a historical novel about Henry VIII’s court centered on the king’s adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

Congratulations ladies!!