IRELAND — Maggie O’Farrell published her 10th novel, 'Land,' in 2024. The book is a work of historical fiction set on a remote Irish peninsula in the aftermath of the Great Hunger.
'Land' centers on Tomás, a talented but poorly paid surveyor and cartographer hired by the British Ordnance Survey to map Irish territory and document the disappearance of tenant households following the potato blight. The novel begins in 1865 and spans millennia—reaching backward to the region’s earliest settlers and forward more than 100 years to follow the life of Tomás’ last surviving child.
Tomás and his wife are survivors of the famine, the loss of parents and siblings, evictions, and the workhouse system, where orphans were forced to split rocks for British troops and cut hides to mend soldiers’ shoes. The character of Tomás draws from O’Farrell’s own family history: her great-great-grandfather, also named Tomás, worked as an uncredited laborer under British officers for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland.
The novel incorporates Irish terms such as 'boreen,' meaning a narrow, unpaved country lane, and 'haggard,' used as a noun for an enclosed area near a farmhouse for storing hay, grain, or straw. 'Land' is dedicated to O’Farrell’s family, 'past, present, and future.'
O’Farrell published the memoir 'I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death' in 2017. Before that, she was best known for intricately plotted, mostly contemporary fiction, including novels such as 'The Hand That First Held Mine' and 'This Must Be the Place.' After her memoir, she turned to historical fiction, publishing three novels in the genre: 'Hamnet,' 'The Marriage Portrait,' and 'Land.'