One of our greatest living novelists resurrects the short life of Hamnet Shakespeare, in a lyrically written and emotionally devastating account of the Bard’s only son.
Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for April 2021
Winner of the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year 2021
Winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year 2020
Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
A stunning new departure for Maggie O'Farrell's fiction, Hamnet is the heart-stopping story behind Shakespeare's most famous play.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.
Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a kestrel and its mistress; a flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; and a glovemaker's son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781472223821
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 340 g
Dimensions: 198 x 126 x 36 mm
Stunning. The writing is exquisite, immersive and compelling... deserves to win prizes - Marian Keyes
The story of Hamnet Shakespeare has been waiting in the shadows for over four hundred years. Maggie O'Farrell brings it dazzlingly, devastatingly, into the light - Kamila Shamsie
Grief and loss so finely written I could hardly bear to read it - Sarah Moss
Heartstopping. Hamnet does for the Shakespeare story what Jean Rhys did for Jane Eyre, inhabiting, enlarging and enriching it in ways that will alter the reader's view for ever - Patrick Gale
Blisteringly brilliant... You'll lap up this intricately told story of grief, love and the bond between twins - Cosmopolitan
[A] rich imagining of the lives of Shakespeare's family enchants... O'Farrell's remarkable novel bursts with life - Sunday Telegraph
A beautiful read. A devastating one. Intricate, and breathtakingly imaginative - Rachel Joyce
A bold undertaking. Beautifully imagined and written - Claire Tomalin
Richly sensuous...something special - Sunday Times
The novel of her career... everyone I know who has managed to get hold of a copy is absolutely in love with it - Observer
A staggeringly beautiful and unbearably poignant novel. O'Farrell is one of the most surprisingly quiet radicals in fiction - Scotsman
Hamnet is Maggie O’Farrell’s first historical novel set in 1596 and tells the story of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet who died aged 11. However, this is only the core of this heart-stopping tale.
O’Farrell is a master of...
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In this emotive historical yarn, O’Farrell reconstructs the life and death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. Four years after his son's passing, he would write one of his most famous plays: Hamlet.
Hamnet is a...
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'And there, by the fire, held in the arms of his mother, in the room in which he learnt to crawl, to eat, to walk, to speak, Hamnet takes his last breath.
He draws it in, he lets it out.
Then there is...
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