Land

An epic portrait of a family navigating the legacy of Ireland's Great Hunger, Land is Maggie O'Farrell at her spellbinding, inimitable best.

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

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

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

Wondrous and magisterial

A stunning achievement. Maggie O'Farrell's most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it.

Expansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it, and will miss its characters terribly

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

As visceral as a novel can get

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

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

A stunning and gorgeous epic. . . . O'Farrell paints a devasting yet tender portrait of Irish history

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

A visceral and magical story about separation, and our complex relationship with the world beyond words

Beautifully done, with descriptions that are both intricate and locked into character

Evocative and immersive . . . a haunting, beautifully written story of survival and memory

Sweeping and vast, Land is a captivating story of family and how the land we share carries our stories

Powerfully affecting . . . expert plotting and perspective

Her most far-reaching, ambitious novel to date . . . a story of grief, trauma, resilience and recovery. A story that has such heart . . . With Land , O'Farrell might snag a Booker nomination

I think that people will hugely love this book. It's a big, sweeping, Irish, multi-generational story. The writing's wonderful. There's magic elements to it. It's a real crowd-pleaser of a book

This is a rich, irresistible story, as intoxicating as the water Tomás drank in that "unquiet place" amid the trees

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.