Author Talk with Maggie O'Farrell

Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, the new novel from the author of Hamnet is at once intimate and epic: a portrait of a family navigating a legacy of upheaval and survival with resilience and love.

• Date: Friday 5th June
• Time: 6.30pm
• Venue: Walthamstow Hall, Holly Bush Lane, Sevenoaks, TN13 3UL
• Tickets: £25 (+ booking fee), all include a copy of Land

'Maggie O'Farrell is a miracle in every sense' Ann Patchett

Land

'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.

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomas 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. Tomas, 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 Tomas is 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 Tomas and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Land 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.

Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell is the author of nine previous novels, including Hamnet which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020. Hamnet has been made into a film and Maggie co-write the screenplay with Academy-Award-winning director Chloé Zhao. The film has already won Best Motion Picture - Drama at the Golden Globes and the audience award at multiple film festivals including Telluride, Toronto and London. Maggie’s bestselling books include the novels After You’d Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand that First Held Mine and her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am.

The ticket includes a copy of Land (RRP £25) which will be available for collection on the evening.

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