INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS • One of Indigo's Best Books of 2026 • Barnes & Noble • A Best Book of the Year (So Far): Vogue • Amazon

“Land is the book I am always looking for, a saturated, page-turning story with a vivid sense of place and extraordinary people. In Land Maggie O’Farrell tells the truth through the fiction with this exquisite perfection of language, an openness to the unknown mysteries of the world, and her fingers on the pulse of what makes us human. I was laid flat by this wild, urgent, mystical and sure-footed novel, which proves again that Maggie O’Farrell is the best of us.” —Virginia Evans, author of The Correspondent

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

"O'Farrell is expansive, full of vigor. . . . The characters' distinct perspectives overlap to build the world that is the novel. All are useful, all are partial, and none reverse [Ireland's] losses." —The New Yorker

“Despite [Land's] 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. . . . 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

“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

“It is [O'Farrell'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. . . . 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

“Land is as multifaceted as the nation its pages explore. O’Farrell has penned what is perhaps her magnum opus. . . . A clear love letter to Ireland and its people who have created a culture, community and landscape that has not only endured centuries of devastation but have thrived in spite of it.” ―The Irish News

“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. . . . I love all of O’Farrell’s novels, but I think Land might be her finest. . . . It sings off the page and pierces your heart.” — Andrea Wulf, The New Statesman

“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. . . . 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

“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. . . . O’Farrell offers all of this in an unceasingly ardent storytelling style.” —Financial 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

“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

“More is more with O’Farrell, a writer of vividity, deep feeling and empathy. . . . 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.” —The Sunday Times

“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. . . . 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

“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 admirably, enjoyably ambitious tale.” ― The Telegraph

“An atmospheric and immersive read.” —BBC

“Land . . . is [O'Farrell's] 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. . . . Suffering will come, it seems to say, and death will knock, but life will always insist upon itself.” —Vulture

“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 rich, irresistible story. . . . O’Farrell is not just telling a 19th-century story, she’s tilling the fields of those great Victorian novelists who understood that the only thing that redeems the contrivance of an unlikely coincidence is the pleasurable shock it gives us.” —Ron Charles

“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. . . . 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)