Maggie O’Farrell’s highly anticipated new novel, Land, more than lives up to expectations.

O’Farrell is a master of language, bending and shaping it to her will with remarkable precision. Her prose paints a vivid portrait of Ireland across time and place, mirroring the emotional landscape of characters grappling with the betrayal of remapping their homeland under British rule, complete with new names and imposed boundaries. She draws readers into the story with hypnotic intensity, refusing to let them look away until the final page.

Set in 1845, the novel follows Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, who are employed on the Great Ordnance Survey, mapping Ireland, a country still bearing the ravages of the Great Hunger. Still haunted by the devastation around him, Tomás is determined that his maps should bear witness to a tragedy he fears will otherwise be forgotten.

Everything changes after Tomás encounters something strange and seemingly otherworldly in a windswept copse. The experience drives him towards obsession, forcing him to confront the ghosts of his past while pulling his family into the vortex of an uncertain future. As each of his children in tern searches for their own place in a changing world, Land becomes a moving meditation on memory, identity, belonging and the powerful ties between family and place.

Beautifully written and deeply atmospheric, Land is another exceptional novel from one of contemporary fiction’s finest storytellers.