Maggie O’Farrell, writer: Identity is complicated

About this episode

Maggie O’Farrell discusses her complex identity and her new novel 'Land', which explores themes of colonization and the Great Famine in Ireland.

“I was born in Coleraine, then I moved to Wales and then I moved to Ireland. It's very complicated and I feel there's a strange sense if you grow up somewhere different from where you were born. That's just true of everyone. If your accent doesn't match your name - as in my case - I think you walk alongside all your life a kind of ghost-self in that there's always a sense of ‘who would I have been if we'd stayed?’” Katie Razzall speaks to acclaimed writer Maggie O’Farrell. The 54-year-old has been a published author for more than 25 years, with her books translated into more than 40 languages. O’Farrell shot to wider international fame following the award-winning screen adaptation of her 2020 novel Hamnet, a story about the son of the English playwright William Shakespeare. She’s now publishing Land, her sweeping new tale centred around an Irish map-maker working for the British army at the time of the Great Famine in Ireland in the mid-19th century. Between 1845 and 1852, at least one million people died due to starvation and disease, with a further two million people fleeing Ireland to escape the famine. The book is about colonisation and devastation, set against a backdrop of…

People in this episode

Host: Katie Razzall

Guest: Maggie O’Farrell

Topics covered

• identity
• colonization
• Irish history
• literature
• personal narrative
• politics

Keywords

• Maggie O’Farrell
• identity
• Great Famine
• Hamnet
• Land
• Irish history
• colonization
• politics
• literature

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Hamnet, Land

Places: Coleraine, Wales, Ireland

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