'You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow'
A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.
'A heart-bursting story of resilience and love' LOUISE KENNEDY
'A story that has such heart' SUNDAY TIMES
'Wild, urgent, mystical... proves again that Maggie O'Farrell is the best of us' VIRGINIA EVANS
'Darkly magical. A brilliant and powerful novel' ALICE WINN
'Magnificent... a feat of the historical imagination' INDEPENDENT
'Full of vigour... O'Farrell excels' NEW YORKER
'As visceral as a novel can get' YAEL VAN DER WOUDEN
On a windswept peninsula in 1865, Tomás and his ten-year-old son, Liam are working on a project to map the whole of Ireland - a challenging task in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. Tomás is determined that his maps will bear witness to the disaster.
When Tomás is sent off course by a mysterious encounter in a wood, his life, and that of his family, will never be the same. Now Liam must somehow finish the work himself, and find a way to get them both home.
Tomás's wife, Phina, is alarmed by the change in her taciturn husband, while Enda, their eldest daughter, still smarts from the injustice of not being allowed to take part in the mapping. Rose, the youngest, fears what lies ahead because it isn't long before Tomás proposes a huge change for them all.
Land is a story of love and survival, buried treasure, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
Genre: Historical
A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.
'A heart-bursting story of resilience and love' LOUISE KENNEDY
'A story that has such heart' SUNDAY TIMES
'Wild, urgent, mystical... proves again that Maggie O'Farrell is the best of us' VIRGINIA EVANS
'Darkly magical. A brilliant and powerful novel' ALICE WINN
'Magnificent... a feat of the historical imagination' INDEPENDENT
'Full of vigour... O'Farrell excels' NEW YORKER
'As visceral as a novel can get' YAEL VAN DER WOUDEN
On a windswept peninsula in 1865, Tomás and his ten-year-old son, Liam are working on a project to map the whole of Ireland - a challenging task in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. Tomás is determined that his maps will bear witness to the disaster.
When Tomás is sent off course by a mysterious encounter in a wood, his life, and that of his family, will never be the same. Now Liam must somehow finish the work himself, and find a way to get them both home.
Tomás's wife, Phina, is alarmed by the change in her taciturn husband, while Enda, their eldest daughter, still smarts from the injustice of not being allowed to take part in the mapping. Rose, the youngest, fears what lies ahead because it isn't long before Tomás proposes a huge change for them all.
Land is a story of love and survival, buried treasure, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"This 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 Bloom
"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
"Haunting 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 Lennon
"Expansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it and will miss its characters terribly." - Charlotte McConaghy
"A 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 Mason
"A 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." - Roisin O'Donnell
"A stunning achievement. Maggie O'Farrell's most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it." - Bobby Palmer
"Wondrous and magisterial." - Kamila Shamsie
"Land 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 Winn
"Land is as visceral as a novel can get. It feels deeply and it tells deeply, both of nature and of the small tragedy of man. It's rare to find a story so grand told with such a fine brush. Land read to me as ancient and brand-new all at once, and something best experienced by diving into it headfirst." - Yael van der Wouden
"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
"Haunting 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 Lennon
"Expansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it and will miss its characters terribly." - Charlotte McConaghy
"A 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 Mason
"A 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." - Roisin O'Donnell
"A stunning achievement. Maggie O'Farrell's most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it." - Bobby Palmer
"Wondrous and magisterial." - Kamila Shamsie
"Land 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 Winn
"Land is as visceral as a novel can get. It feels deeply and it tells deeply, both of nature and of the small tragedy of man. It's rare to find a story so grand told with such a fine brush. Land read to me as ancient and brand-new all at once, and something best experienced by diving into it headfirst." - Yael van der Wouden
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