Maggie O’Farrell (1972 in Coleraine, Northern Ireland), grew up in Wales and Scotland after moving with her family at the age of two. At eight years old, she suffered a severe encephalitis that kept her hospitalized and away from school for more than a year, an experience that deeply influenced her life and work. She studied English Literature at Cambridge and worked as a journalist in Hong Kong and London before fully dedicating herself to writing. She currently lives in Edinburgh.
Her work is characterized by the psychological depth of her characters and original narrative. Among her most famous novels are, After You’d Gone (2000), her literary debut, winner of the Betty Trask Award; The Hand That First Held Mine (2010), awarded the Costa Novel Award; and Hamnet (2020), an international bestseller and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, which fictionalizes the life of William Shakespeare’s family.
Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages and has received numerous international accolades.
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