'Hamnet' novelist Maggie O'Farrell maps her Irish roots in 'Land'
6/2/202646 min
O’Farrell’s 2020 novel ‘Hamnet’ was adapted into an award-winning film last year. She co-wrote the screenplay. It’s about the grief Shakespeare and his wife Agnes struggle with after their son, Hamnet, dies of the plague, and how that grief leads him to write the play Hamlet. O’Farrell’s new novel, ‘Land,’ is about the lives of an Irish family living in the aftermath of the Great Famine. Even though she writes historical novels, she tries not to lean too much into history: “I find there’s nothing that makes me put a book down faster than if somebody is trying to show me that they’ve done all their homework,” she says. ‘Land’ is in part based on her family.
Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Classicist Mary Beard’s new book ‘Talking Classics.’
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
It's June and another big week in the run-up to the midterms. Primaries in half a dozen states, including California, where new congressional maps are in place and a chaotic race for governor is wide open. We're also following gas prices and Iran. So far, talk of a peace deal is just talk. We'll keep you posted. Listen every morning, up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Terry Gross· Host0:23
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest is author Maggie O'Farrell. She's best known for her twenty twenty novel Hamnet. It was adapted into a movie last year, and Jessie Buckley won an Oscar for her performance as Agnes Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's wife. O'Farrell co-wrote the film's screenplay with its director, Chloe Zhao. Maggie O'Farrell spoke to Fresh Air's executive producer Sam Briger about her new novel, Land. Here's Sam.
Sam Briger· Host0:52
Hamnet is a fictionalized version of the story of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway. It's about how they meet and fall in love, marry, and have children. Their young son, Hamnet, dies from the plague. The grief shakes the family and leads Shakespeare to write his play, Hamlet. O'Farrell's novel, Hamnet, won Britain's Women's Prize for Fiction. Maggie O'Farrell has a new novel called Land. It takes place in Ireland in the eighteen sixties, beginning with Tomas and Liam, an Irish father and ten-year-old son, out in foul weather, mapping a peninsula as part of the British Ordnance Survey of Ireland.