Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (movie edition)

Some stories reach across centuries and land directly in your chest. This is one of them.

From critically acclaimed, bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell, this is a deeply moving, luminous novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the grief that quietly shaped one of the most celebrated plays ever written. Soon to be a major motion picture from Oscar award-winning director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley.

England, 1580. The Black Death drifts across the countryside like fog off the water. A young Latin tutor falls helplessly in love with Agnes — a wild, gifted, utterly unforgettable woman who walks the land with a falcon on her glove and a healer’s instinct in her hands. Together they build a life, a family, a world. And then, in one devastating moment, that world cracks open.

O’Farrell’s prose is the kind you read slowly on purpose, not wanting it to end. Hamnet is a portrait of a marriage, a meditation on loss, and a tender reclamation of a boy history nearly forgot — the boy whose name became legend.

• Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction
• A New York Times bestseller
• Hailed as “mesmerizing,” “seductive,” and “impossible to put down”
• Special Movie Tie-in Edition featuring film artwork

This is the kind of book that lingers long after the last page — perfect for a rainy afternoon, a quiet evening, or tucked into a bag for the walk along the Marginal Way.

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