O'FARRELL, MAGGIE
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; 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.
Nascuda el 1972 a Irlanda del Nord, va créixer a Gal·les i Escòcia. Després d'estudiar Literatura anglesa a laUniversitat de Cambridge, va viatjar a Hong Kong, Mongòlia i l'Orient Mitjà. Ha treballat de cambrera, missatgera, professora, secretària i responsable del suplement literari del diari Independent on Sunday. Ha conreat la poesia abans de dedicar-se a la ficció. Les seves dues novel·les anteriors són After you'd gone (2000), un tour de force de llenguatge i imaginació, i un gran èxit internacional, i My lover's lover (2002), una història d'amor plena de lirisme i intriga. Actualment viu a Londres.
