Land

by Maggie O'Farrell, Maggie O’Farrell, T. S. Eliot · 2026

Land is a sweeping historical novel set in Ireland in the years surrounding the Great Hunger. In 1865, cartographer Tomás and his reluctant son Liam are hired by the Ordnance Survey to map a windswept Atlantic peninsula. As they chart the landscape, Tomás becomes obsessed with the wild, enchanted copse he discovers, leading his family into a precarious new life on the rugged coast. The narrative follows Tomás, his wife Phina, their daughters Enda and Rose, and later a mute son Eugene, as they endure famine‑scarred memories, British colonial pressures, and the relentless pull of the land itself. O'Farrell weaves natural history, family saga, and Irish history into a lyrical meditation on how people and place are inseparably bound.