Land

A deep-mapping of a place and its people, a heart-bursting story of resilience and love. Land is simply the best novel I’ve read in years – Louise KennedyA breathtaking hymn to the sanctity of natural spaces, operating on timescales both intimate and geological. I finished Land moved not only by the vivid lives of its human characters, but the thrumming, gorgeous presence of its mosses, waters, winds and skies – Daniel MasonHaunting and elemental in its evocation, Land is a novel of startling imagination and power. Upon finishing it, I did not feel so much that I had read a book as lived inside it – Ferdia LennonWondrous and magisterial – Kamila ShamsieA stunning achievement. Maggie O’Farrell’s most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it. – Bobby PalmerExpansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it, and will miss its characters terribly – Charlotte McConaghyA work of towering imagination and empathy; a beautifully layered novel, told in lyrical, haunting prose which transforms familiar history into something new and startlingly relevant. To read this novel is to embark on an emotional journey, to lose yourself in the pages of a story that is at once devastating and irrepressibly life affirming. I loved it – Roisín O’DonnellAs visceral as a novel can get – Yael van der WoudenLand is a vast, darkly magical novel from a masterful writer. Maggie O’Farrell’s historical fiction illuminates not only the past, but our own moment in time. A brilliant and powerful novel – Alice WinnThis deep, dense, heartrending novel is the best of Maggie O’Farrell, who is the best of writers, modern and alive, with the detailed brilliance of great nineteenth-century storytellers. All I need as a reader is in Land – Amy BloomA stunning and gorgeous epic… . O’Farrell paints a devasting yet tender portrait of Irish history * Publishers Weekly, starred review *Land is a hidden grove of a book. Since leaving its pages, the stories hiding in place-names and redacted maps have seemed palpable in my everyday life. I loved the characters, the slowing effect of O’Farrell’s prose and her careful splicing of story into history – Amy JeffsA visceral and magical story about separation, and our complex relationship with the world beyond words * Rachel Joyce, author of The Homemade God *

Maggie O’Farrell is the author of HAMNET, Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I AM, I AM, I AM, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include AFTER YOU’D GONE, MY LOVER’S LOVER, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She is also the author of three books for children, WHERE SNOW ANGELS GO, THE BOY WHO LOST HIS SPARK and WHEN THE STAMMER CAME TO STAY. She lives in Edinburgh.