Maggie O'Farrell announces upcoming novel Land

Maggie O'Farrell has announced the release of her new novel Land, out June 2026.

Land is a multi-generational epic, which opens on a windswept peninsula in the west of Ireland and follows its characters to Canada and India, amongst other places. The novel was inspired by O'Farrells own family history and the Irish landscape.

"Tomás and his ten-year-old son, Liam, are working for the Ordnance Survey which is mapping the whole of Ireland," reads the description.

"It's 1865 and the country has been decimated by the Great Hunger. Tomás is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. An unsettling encounter in a copse on a remote stretch of the coast sets Tomás and his family on an unexpected journey, which unearths histories old and new and changes all their lives, and the lives of those who come after them."

This will follow the film adaption of O'Farrell novel Hamnet, out in cinemas on January 9. The screenplay was co-written by the author and is set to star Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William Shakespeare.

"Three or so years ago, I was staring out of the window on a long and delayed train journey when a sentence appeared in my head: His father was ever a man of few words," said O'Farrell of her new novel.

“I pictured a man and a reluctant child on a rain-soaked hillside, with surveying tools in hand. I knew immediately that I had the opening to a novel I’d long been mulling for a long time - a novel about a father and son mapping together in the west of Ireland."

Land will be available as hardback, e-book and audio across Ireland on June 2.