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The award-winning, bestselling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, returns with a soaring historical novel set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger.
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times, and for all time.
"A stunning and gorgeous epic.... O'Farrell paints a devasting yet tender portrait of Irish history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Evocative and impassioned... Steeped in Irish history and folklore, alive with a sense of wonder." —Kirkus (starred review)
"O'Farrell's latest is highly recommended for all fiction collections. This lyrical and moving historical novel about Ireland and one family within its larger history will enchant her fans and anyone who likes family sagas." —Library Journal (starred review)
"A transfixing epic...[Land] adds to O'Farrell's reputation as a superb literary stylist...This wonderfully expansive yet intimate saga, which illustrates how individuals survive the devastating legacies of imperialism and religious control, offers a sense of empathetic harmony between author and subject." —Booklist (starred review)
"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 Kennedy, author of Trespasses
"A visceral and magical story about separation, and our complex relationship with the world beyond words." —Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
This information about Land was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Double Vision
Maggie O'Farrell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), After You'd Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), and Instructions for a Heatwave. She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. She lives in Edinburgh.
Author Interview
Link to Maggie O'Farrell's Website
Name Pronunciation
Maggie O'Farrell: oh-FEHR-uhl
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