Description
Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, Land, the
new novel from the author of Hamnet, is at once intimate and epic: a portrait
of a family navigating a legacy of upheaval and loss with love and hope.
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son,
Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland.
The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great
Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be
a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be
completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a
copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by
the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in
Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both
home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonisation and
rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent
ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing
ever goes away. As spellbinding and various as the landscape that inspired it, Land is,
above all, a story of survival, for our times, and for all time.
