Hamnet

Maggie O'Farrell · b. 1972 · United Kingdom

Why it matters

Agnes Hathaway loses her eleven-year-old son Hamnet to plague in 1596, years before her husband, an unnamed Latin tutor turned London playwright, writes Hamlet. A speculative, emotionally devastating account of the private grief inside a very public afterlife.

At a glance

A dual timeline and intensely close attention to grief ask for unhurried, attentive reading.