Land

By Maggie O'Farrell

Book Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - 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, Tom s 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. Tom s, 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 Tom s is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of 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 Tom s, 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0593320646
• ISBN13: 9780593320648
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Good story, but impossibly sluggish.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal cruelty/death, graphic suffering, heavy themes of trauma and loss. Set in 1865 along Ireland’s Atlantic coast, this novel follows Tomás, a cartographer, and his son Liam during the Ordnance Survey project amidst the Great Hunger. Tomás meticulously documents the famine’s devastation, but an encounter in a mysterious copse profoundly transforms their lives, igniting a saga of separation, reunion, and rebellion. The narrative spans generations, focusing on Tomás’s four children as they navigate upheaval and seek a sense of belonging. Ms O’Farrell intertwines human drama with the natural world, featuring ancient woodlands, sacred wells, and rich folklore. The land, steeped in history, emerges as a central character in its own right. Drawing inspiration from her heritage, as her great-great-grandfather contributed to the Ordnance Survey maps, she infuses the story with authenticity and depth. While I appreciated the lovely prose, I found the narrative to be an inconsistent blend of realism, myth, and family saga. The middle sections felt sluggish and dull, and ultimately, the novel did not engage me as I had hoped.