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During the Oscars ceremony, it was Jessie Buckley who took home an award for her role in the film adaptation of Hamnet, but author Maggie O'Farrell has herself attended quite a few award ceremonies too: with seven literary prizes to her name, the Irish-British author — whose work has been translated into more than thirty languages — is one of the most beloved and most decorated writers of the moment. She talks with Annelies Beck at Bozar about her magnificent new novel Land.

A co-production of Passa Porta and Bozar, with the support of Culture Ireland

Land

In her new historical novel Land, Maggie O'Farrell takes us back to the time before and after the Irish famine (1845–1850). Tomás and his ten-year-old son Liam are taking part in a vast project to map the whole of Ireland. A disturbing encounter, however, changes everything, and will determine the fate of every member of their family forever. Land is as grand and unpredictable as the Irish landscape, a story about separation and reunion, colonization and revolt.

hamnet

Over more than twenty-five years as a writer, Maggie O'Farrell has explored a wide variety of themes, gathered numerous prizes, and been translated into more than thirty languages. She was certainly no unknown, but the film adaptation of Hamnet, with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in the leading roles, brought her an even wider reach. With her tenth novel, Land, for which she drew on the history of her own family, she shows herself to be more ambitious and more engaged than ever.

about the author

Maggie O'Farrell wrote the very well received memoir I Am, I Am, I Am (2017). She is also the author of several award-winning novels. With Hamnet (Waterstones Book of the Year and winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction) she achieved her definitive worldwide breakthrough in 2020. Her latest novel, Land, was published in June of this year.

about the interviewer

Annelies Beck (1973) is a writer, journalist, and anchor of Terzake. She has also written two novels: Over het kanaal (2011), a historical novel set during the First World War, and Toekomstkoorts (2019), about a Belgian attempt at colonization in Brazil.