Land by Maggie O’Farrell review – an ambitious story of mapmaking in Ireland

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, Land by Maggie O’Farrell review – an ambitious story of mapmaking in Ireland, Set in the aftermath of the famine, the Hamnet author’s family saga folds in myth and folklore ‘His father was ever a man of few words,” begins Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th novel, a lengthy and ambitious story set in the aftermath of the Irish famine. Land opens in 1865 on a rainswept Irish peninsula and takes us to Dublin, Rome, Quebec and Kerala as it tells the story of two generations and gestures backwards and forwards at two more. The opening line came to O’Farrell on a train journey from Belfast to Dublin, and became the way in to a story based in part on that of her great-great-grandfather, who worked for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland not long after the great hunger. “What, I wondered, would it have been like to be revising the maps at that time,” she writes in a short introductory note; “to be recording and setting down the devastation that had occurred?” In bitter weather, Tomás and

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Global file for readers following international affairs, institutions, conflict, diplomacy, economics, and cross-border consequences. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-01T06:00:09+00:00.

What to watch

Open questions include whether primary sources issue follow-up statements, whether local or market impacts become clearer, and whether additional reporting changes the timeline or adds material context.

Source

Primary source: Land by Maggie O’Farrell review – an ambitious story of mapmaking in Ireland via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.