We’re delighted to welcome bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell back to Penarth, to celebrate the release of her new novel, Land.

Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, 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 survival with resilience and love. Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts and a particularly loyal dog. It’s also a story about place, and how layers of history change landscapes and the people who live in them.

Book your tickets today, they won’t be around for long!

Land:
Inspired by Maggie’s own family history and by the landscape of the Great Atlantic Way, Land follows a mapmaker, Tomás, and his son, who are working for the Ordnance Survey, surveying the whole of Ireland. It’s 1865 and the country has been devastated by the Great Hunger. Tomás intends his maps to bear witness to the catastrophe.

They come across an ancient scrap of woodland which isn’t recorded on any existing maps. A strange encounter in this unsettling place leads them to embark on an extraordinary odyssey that will unearth histories old and new, changing not only their lives but those of everyone who comes after them.

Land is a spellbinding novel of separation, longing, recovery and survival in the shadow of tragedy.

Maggie O’Farrell is the award-winning author of nine previous novels, including The Marriage Portrait, The Hand That First Held Mine and Hamnet, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020. Hamnet has now been made into a film, released in January 2026 starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. Maggie co-wrote the screenplay with Academy-Award-winning director Chloé Zhao. The film has already won Best Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes and the audience award at multiple film festivals including Telluride, Toronto and London. Her novels have sold over four million copies in the UK and Ireland and have been translated into 43 languages worldwide. She has received numerous accolades, including the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel Award. Maggie’s memoir I Am, I Am, I Am was a number one Sunday Times bestseller.

NOTE: Maggie O’Farrell will not be personally dedicating books after the event.