Hamnet
England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
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What you might want to know about Hamnet
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In 1596 Stratford, an eleven-year-old boy lies dying of plague while his actor father is away in London. The novel inhabits his mother Agnes, the marriage, the household, and what comes after the funeral.
Yes. Hamnet imagines the life and death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet, who died in 1596 at age 11, four years before his father wrote Hamlet. The basic biographical facts are documented; the emotional life and household details are invented.
Yes. Hamnet won the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It was a New York Times bestseller and one of the most acclaimed novels of 2020.
Hamnet was written by Maggie O'Farrell, published in 2020 by Guanda.
Hamnet is 358 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Hamnet takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Hamnet is a standalone novel by Maggie O'Farrell, not part of a series.
Hamnet is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
