Maggie O’Farrell

A writer and journalist, her large body of work involving complex exploration of family relations, loss, and the past has been translated in more than twenty countries. She has published eight novels, several of which have been translated into Catalan: The Distance Between Us (La distància que ens separa, Angle Editorial, 2004), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award; The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (L’estranya desaparició d’Esme Lennox, La Campana, 2007; Salamandra, 2009; L’Altra, 2020); The Hand That First Held Mine (La mà que prenia la meva, L’Altra and Libros del Asteroide, 2018), winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award; Instructions for a Heatwave (Instrucciones para una ola de calor, Salamandra, 2013); and This Must Be the Place (Aquest deu ser el lloc, L’Altra / Libros del Asteroide, 2017). She has also written a highly original autobiography I Am, I Am, I Am (Visc, i visc, i visc, L’Altra and Libros del Asteroide, 2019). O’Farrell has become a writer of international renown with her most recent novel Hamnet (L’Altra / Libros del Asteroide, 2020), which is inspired by the terrible family story that led Shakespeare to write his famous work Hamlet, although her focus is on a lesser-known character, Shakespeare’s wife, a free spirit who escapes from the conventions of her times.