Maggie O’Farrell is a British-Irish bestselling and award-winning author. She has written several critically acclaimed novels, including The Distance Between Us (2009), The Hand That First Held Mine (2010), Instructions for a Heatwave (2013), This Must Be The Place (2016), and her latest Hamnet (2020). Her memoir, I am, I am, I am (2017), is a Sunday Times no. 1 bestseller.
Maggie O’Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet
Watch
Maggie O’Farrell
On William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare’s House
Henley Street, Stratford
Watch
Hamnet
Book Extract
Watch
Maggie O’Farrell
On Grief
Watch
Hamnet
Book Extract
Watch
Maggie O’Farrell
On Agnes
Viola and Sebastian
Twelfth Night
Watch
Hamnet
Book Extract
Watch
Maggie O’Farrell
On Lessons Learnt from Writing Hamnet
Watch
Maggie O’Farrell
On Book Recommendations
Featured book by Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet
Inspired by Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamnet is the story of a boy whose life has been forgotten, but whose name has echoed throughout the centuries as one of the greatest plays ever written. Reimagining the life of Hamnet Shakespeare, prematurely dead at the age of eleven in 1596, O’Farrell creates an extraordinarily tender and imaginative tale.
Read moreAuthor recommends
Wide Sargasso Sea
By Jean Rhys
Recommended by: Maggie O’Farrell
Publish Date: 1966
The novel tells the story of Antoinette Mason, the woman known as Bertha in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, from her childhood to her arranged marriage to Mr. Rochester, an English gentleman who will turn out to be abusive and cruel.…
The Sisters Brothers
By Patrick deWitt
Recommended by: Maggie O’Farrell
Publish Date: 2011 Awards: 2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards; 2011 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
An homage to the classic Western, The Sisters Brothers is the story of two notorious assassins, Eli and Charlies Sisters, chasing their victim, Hermann Kermit Warm. Throughout a long and violent journey, one of them will start questioning his life…