Land

A Novel

De: Maggie O'Farrell

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.

“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, author of North Woods

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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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, author of North Woods

“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 19th century storytellers. All I need as a reader is in Land.” —Amy Bloom, author of In Love

“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, head-first.” —Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep

“Wondrous and magisterial.” —Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire

“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

“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, author of Glorious Exploits

“A stunning achievement. Maggie O’Farrell’s most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it.” — Bobby Palmer, author of Main Characters