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.

'A heart-bursting story of resilience and love' Louise Kennedy

'Haunting and elemental' Ferdia Lennon

'Wondrous and magisterial' Kamila Shamsie

'Breathtaking' Daniel Mason

'A work of towering imagination and empathy' Roisìn O'Donnell

'As visceral as a novel can get' Yael van der Wouden

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 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 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.

Ideal for readers who…

• Loved Hamnet and have been waiting for whatever Maggie O'Farrell wrote next — Land is her tenth novel, and early reviews suggest it proves Hamnet's success was no fluke. The same gift for finding the emotional truth inside a historical moment is here, applied to a new story and a new century.
• Are drawn to Irish historical fiction set around the Great Famine — Land is set in 1865, in the aftermath of the Great Hunger, following a father and son working on Ireland's Ordnance Survey as they map a peninsula in the west of Ireland — and uncover something the land itself has been holding onto.
• Want fiction that explores how trauma passes through families and across generations — O'Farrell has said the novel draws on her own family's history with Ireland's famine. The result is a multi-generational story about how loss, displacement and survival shape the people who come after — themes that will resonate with anyone interested in their own family's history of emigration or hardship.
• Are interested in maps, surveying, and how places hold their histories — the novel's central device is mapping: a father and son hired to chart land that carries memories the official record was never meant to capture. For readers fascinated by landscape, cartography, or the hidden histories beneath familiar places, this is a novel built entirely around that idea.
• Watched the Hamnet film and want to read more from the author behind it — O'Farrell co-wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated Hamnet adaptation, and the producer behind that film has already optioned Land for the screen. If the film sent you looking for more of O'Farrell's writing, this is where to go.
• Want one of 2026's most anticipated literary novels before everyone else has read it — Land has been named among the year's most anticipated books, and O'Farrell herself has said she feels "more than a little nervous" about its publication. For readers who like to be ahead of the conversation, this is the one to read now.

ISBN

9781472289094

Format

Paperback

Publisher

Tinder Press, (02 June 2026)

Number of Pages

436

Weight

660 grams

Language

English

Dimensions

232 x 152 x 36 mm

Categories:

Historical fiction Family Life