Named a Most Anticipated Read of 2026 by The New Yorker • The New York Times • GQ • The Guardian • BBC • Libby • The Sydney Morning Herald • USA Today • Town & Country • The Minnesota Star Tribune • Featured in BBC’s Spring Preview • Oprah Daily • Goodreads • Harper’s Bazaar • Los Angeles Times • Named a Best New Book by Women’s World • BookRiot • Vogue • Lit Hub • AARP • A Globe and Mail Best New Book of Summer 2026

“Sometimes—rarely—there is a book that I want to read again immediately, the very moment I have reached its last page. A book to be consumed slowly, rolling every sentence in your mind and heart. Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel Land is such a book. Over the past years, I have read all her novels, devouring them, yearning for more. She’s a masterful storyteller—the best contemporary novelist in the English-speaking world, in my opinion—whose writing is so vastly varied that I’m in awe of her imagination and range. . . . As in all her novels, she’s a virtuoso conjuror of characters, a formidable conductor of narrative pace—expanding and compressing time, at once breathless and calm. Land is a moving book, coming at you in waves of subtle and quiet storytelling with bursts of drama, but never rushed. . . . Land is a story of regret, loss, rebellion, love, family—and of a land that has enticed those who wanted to conquer, extract and enslave. ‘Now, as I was saying’ Tomás tells Liam, ‘myth is fact and fact is myth, and both are embodied in the land itself’. I love all of O’Farrell’s novels, but I think Land might be her finest. It’s as layered as the place she writes about. It’s epic and intimate, tender and crushingly devastating. It sings off the page and pierces your heart.” —Andrea Wulf, The New Statesman

“A soaring, visionary narrative that connects the known world to the misty realms of Celtic legend. . . . As the struggling men and women in Land endure defeat and distrust victory, it is their frailty as much as their strength that wins our sympathy and holds our attention.” —The Wall Street Journal

“O’Farrell’s research shines in the Quebec sections: Enda’s peregrinations, as she looks for work and lodging, reveal a cross-section of New World types and locales—a boarding house, a hired girl, a landlady with an ‘aged and malodorous cat.’ Accomplished at the violin, she takes to fiddling on street corners for extra money. At one point, she is greeted by Irish construction workers who seem to recognize the melody she’s playing. Later, as she performs a different tune, ‘in her head blossoms a vision of the peninsula—field-boundary walls that undulate over every bluff and hollow, the water lilies that crowd into wet ditches in early summer, the surface of the lough that quilts itself in a breeze, the cows that turn their large eyes upon you, the darkness that rises up from the hills at dusk.’” —The New Yorker

“Alive to the intersecting pressures of family and history, O’Farrell then unfolds a sprawling story. . . . This involves a supporting cast worthy of an actual 19th-century novel. . . . Alongside that narrative power, the novel teems with broken limbs, broken hearts, sexual violence, deaths and ferocious, ferociously loyal dogs. O’Farrell offers all of this in an unceasingly ardent storytelling style.” —Financial Times

“O’Farrell’s fiction has a more complicated calling [than the tearjerker]—her characters are endowed with a dignity that gives their despair power and meaning. She knows that anguish cannot properly infiltrate a reader who isn’t experiencing the full spectrum of emotions: disappointment, amazement, contentment, frustration, pride, and even unbridled bliss. . . . In Land, pain is not instrumental—neither a catalyst for growth nor a defining characteristic—but rather a natural companion to merriment and satisfaction. It is a source of ambivalence rather than simple resolve or despair. . . . In Land, O’Farrell posits that the fate of one family, with all of its human-size joys and heartaches, cannot be extricated from history on a mass scale.” —The Atlantic

“It is [Maggie’s] historical fiction—the radiant The Marriage Portrait and the piercingly sad Hamnet—that have rocketed her to worldwide fame. Land is the best of the three. It is ambitious, wide and deep. . . . There is great sadness in this book, and much sorrow, and a particularly disturbing extended scene of an exorcism, but Land is deeply moving and never depressing, lightened by myth, nature and song. . . . How lucky we are that O’Farrell told this [story].” —The Boston Globe

“An epic novel.” —The Minnesota Star Tribune

“Propulsive and luscious throughout.” —Fiona Mozley, The New York Times

“Land is a magnificent reminder from O’Farrell that the deceptively simple task of telling a good story—and this one is a feat of historical imagination—is a true art.” —The Independent

“More is more with O’Farrell, a writer of vividity, deep feeling and empathy. Her preferred storytelling mode is in an urgent, present-tense, omniscient third-person. Her colour palette is not blue, yellow and violet, but cerulean, primrose and opaline. Her character descriptions are as teeming in waymarking detail as any small-scale map. . . . With Land, O’Farrell might snag a Booker nomination, an accolade that has so far (unaccountably, to fans) eluded her.” —The Sunday Times (UK)

“A breathtaking epic that covers centuries and continents, and an urgent and impassioned mapping of historical change driven by famine, emigration, language loss, secularisation, and much more. . . . Its finest moments come in astonishingly vivid set-piece descriptions. . . . Again and again, O’Farrell pauses to colour in a striking picture of a place, an event, or a feeling, and [the] result is crisp and eye-opening.” —The Irish Times

“Just when you are thinking that [Land] is as hard-edged as realism can get, O’Farrell will take the narration inside the mind of a dog, or an unborn child making out the shape of a handprint. . . . All of this is beautifully done, with descriptions both intricate and locked into character: I don’t think, for example, that I have ever read a better account of the moment when Latin starts to make sense than her vignette of Liam trying to translate Pliny. . . . The wonder of O’Farrell’s novel—easily her most ambitious—is that it soars above every one of the risks I have listed and to which any less ridiculously talented novelist would have succumbed. Her great-great-grandfather—who also helped map post-Famine Ireland—would be proud of her.” —The Scotsman

“An education on the history of Ireland and a meditation on family, loss and love, Land is a masterpiece that I’m recommending to everyone this summer.” —The Spectator

“An atmospheric and immersive read.” —BBC

“Maggie O’Farrell’s exquisite new novel, Land, is a haunting tale of loss, endurance and renewal. . . . Moving between intimacy and sweeping historical change, the novel reveals the land itself as a living archive of rupture, survival, and belonging. . . . [Land] resists any neat separation between past and present, ‘myth’ and ‘fact’, showing instead how meaning endures in material and uncanny forms. Meaning can be found in stone and soil, in buried objects, and in memories that resist erasure. In O’Farrell’s hands, the land is both witness and participant, holding within it the imprint of human experience and the unsettling knowledge that nothing really goes away.” —The Conversation

“Land, O’Farrell’s sweeping tenth novel and third consecutive work of historical fiction, is her most ambitious and dynamic work to date. At the sentence level, its craftsmanship sings; her prose is as lush and imbued with the miraculous as it is lived-in and inviting. . . . [Land’s] characters comprise some of her most vivid portraits of humanity. . . . O’Farrell’s sentences—the musicality of her repetitions, the genial warmth of her narration, the visceral pleasures of her imagery—offer comfort against the backdrop of heartbreak so common to her fiction. The vitality of her language, its frolicsome dance with personification, communicates its own resistance in the face of an indifferent world, exploited by imperialist greed and barbaric, militant might. Suffering will come, it seems to say, and death will knock, but life will always insist upon itself.” —Vulture

“Despite its epic, polyphonic sweep, it’s packed with plenty of O’Farrell’s poetic, untamed language, as well as the kind of striking details that will vividly stay with you long after you read it: a mystical well in a forest with supernatural powers that either grants wishes or inspires madness, an enormous Irish wolfhound that reappears across centuries, references to Gaelic folklore, and eventually a passage to India and the furthest reaches of the British Empire. Land is a book of loss and upheaval and generational trauma, but also, ultimately, one that pulses with a luminous sense of hope. It is sublime, in every sense of the word.” —Vogue

“Lyrical and compelling.” —People

“Land traces thousands of years of Irish pain, glory, and ghosts.” —ELLE

“At once canny and artful, Land manages to transport its reader to a distant time and place while simultaneously alluding obliquely to the concerns of today.” —Slate

“A hauntingly, beautifully written story of survival and memory.” —Women & Home

“Sweeping, elemental and . . . possibly her best yet.” —Esquire (India), ‘Books We’re Excited About in 2026’

“In her latest historical gut-punch, the Irish author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait returns to her home turf with an intimate family saga nestled with a story that stretches far beyond the scale of human lives into the deep time of geography itself.” —Oprah Daily

“In her hotly anticipated follow-up to Hamnet, the Northern Irish author turns her attention from Shakespeare’s tragic family loss to the aftermath of the Great Hunger, which killed more than a million and spurred waves of emigration that would alter the country and reshape generations. . . . The emotional journey that unfolds is intense and atmospheric, tied to the land and boasts incredible descriptions of the natural world.” —Zoomer

“Fascinating and entertaining . . . [Land’s] characters bring it all to life. Readers will cheer for this family in their best moments and grieve with them in their losses. . . . Fans of O’Farrell’s previous novel Hamnet will indulge in the immersive story and masterful use of language. This book, however, stands apart thematically and is most certainly an original and unique literary work. Very few novels address so many topics and explore the world in such a meaningful way; Land will leave readers with a lot to think about. Surpassing the very high expectations for its release, Land could be the most talked about book of this season. One that will be treasured for many years to come.” —BookTrib
“Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel is a gripping family saga that gos back a millenium. . . . As much about the land as it is about the people, you’ll struggle to look up from Land’s pages on holiday.” —The Standard (UK)
“How do you follow Hamnet, a luminous meditation of grief that became both a bestseller and an Oscar-winning film? If Maggie O’Farrell felt any apprehension about approaching another book after the success of her mega-hit, it certainly doesn’t show. Land is a sweeping work of historical fiction, a multigenerational epic and her most ambitious book to date. . . . It’s moving and magnificent, as is O’Farrell’s MO. —Independent, ‘The Books Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer’
“Land is a vast, darkly magical novel from a masterful writer. Maggie O’Farrell’s historical fiction illuminates not only the past, but our own moment in time. A brilliant and powerful novel.” —Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam

“Expansive and intimate, this beautiful book swallowed me whole. I loved it, and will miss its characters terribly.” —Charlotte McConaghy, author of Wild Dark Shore

“Haunting and elemental in its evocation, Land is a novel of startling imagination and power. Upon finishing it, I did not feel so much that I had read a book as lived inside it.” —Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious Exploits

“Land is a hidden grove of a book. Since leaving its pages, the stories hiding in place-names and redacted maps have seemed palpable in my everyday life. I loved the characters, the slowing effect of O’Farrell’s prose and her careful splicing of story into history.” —Amy Jeffs, author of Storyland and Old Songs

“A stunning achievement. Maggie O’Farrell’s most ambitious novel yet, and maybe her most moving. I adored it.” —Bobby Palmer, author of Isaac and the Egg and Main Characters

“Wondrous and magisterial.” —Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire and The Best of Friends

“A deep-mapping of a place and its people, a heart-bursting story of resilience and love. Land is simply the best novel I’ve read in years.” —Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

“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

“This deep, dense, heartrending novel is the best of Maggie O’Farrell, who is the best of writers, modern and alive, with the detailed brilliance of great nineteenth-century storytellers. All I need as a reader is in Land.” —Amy Bloom, author of In Love

“Land is as visceral as a novel can get. It feels deeply and it tells deeply, both of nature and of the small tragedy of man. It's rare to find a story so grand told with such a fine brush. Land read to me as ancient and brand-new all at once, and something best experienced by diving into it headfirst.” —Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep

“A work of towering imagination and empathy.” —Roisín O’Donnell, author of Nesting

“A visceral and magical story about separation, and our complex relationship with the world beyond words.” —Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“Surely Maggie O’Farrell’s star could not be much higher following Hamnet? But, with the publication of this, her 10th novel, it seems certain to climb even farther. . . . A magisterial multigenerational epic. . . . With haunting vividness and humanity, [Land] conjures a nation blighted by catastrophe, and a family trying to find their way afterwards, caught in the crosshairs of history. Commingling colonisation, rebellion, love, loss and survival, it is a novel to sink into, as intricate as a map, as multilayered and mysterious as the land it depicts—confirming O’Farrell as a writer at the height of her powers.” —The Bookseller

“Skillfully drawn. . . . [and] radiant. . . . Steeped in Irish history and folklore, [Land is] alive with a sense of wonder.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A stunning and gorgeous epic. . . . O'Farrell paints a devasting yet tender portrait of Irish history.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A transfixing epic.” —Booklist (starred review)

“As ever, O’Farrell’s prose is a gift: Her language is lush and muscular, particularly in descriptions of landscape and foliage. . . . Land is a story of great losses—and greater power.” —BookPage (starred review)

“O’Farrell’s latest is highly recommended for all fiction collections. This lyrical and moving historical novel about Ireland and one family within its larger history will enchant her fans and anyone who likes family sagas.” —Library Journal

“In our digital age, where ‘mapping’ means following the small blue triangle on Google, Land encourages us to think again. For these important illustrations not only chart the contours and waterways of a country, they’re an indication of power and ownership, of who got to decide the language of place names. O’Farrell’s writing is, as always, evocative. We can almost hear the wind blowing in from the wild Atlantic ocean, feel the sodden moss and bog beneath feet, smell smoke from the burning peat swirl through the air. The characters, lovingly shaped and matured across 400-plus pages, jump up with such three-dimensional vibrancy, you can almost hear Chloé Zhao shouting ‘cut!’” —The List

“Sweeping and vast, Land is a captivating story of family and how the land we inhabit carries our stories.” —Red Magazine

“Mixing mysticism and brutal reality, exploring themes of Church, community and colonialism, straying into pre-history, spanning lifetimes and crossing continents . . . stunning. . . . Despite heart-rending ironies and missed life chances, the ending brings a curious solace. Brilliant.” —Saga Magazine

“Land is a magnificent achievement.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Evocative, vivid. . . . She’s a master.” —AARP Reads

“Easily one of the best books I’ve read. . . . The writing is so juicy.” —Cup of Jo

“O’Farrell once again opens up the past like she’s cracking a geode. . . . Readers of Land will experience that same mystical transportation. Like a skylark periodically wheeling from its path, this story sometimes flies into other timelines, past and future, here and around the world. This is a rich, irresistible story.” —Ron Charles’ The Tuesday Review Substack

“A novel hasn’t left me this spellbound since North Woods.” —Big Salad Substack

“Her best book.” —Scary Mommy

“Absorbing, atmospheric.” —Upfront Reads