Description

‘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, Tomas 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. Tomas is determined that his maps will bear witness to the disaster.

When Tomas 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.

Tomas’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 Tomas 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.