Hamnet

Hamnet is a hauntingly beautiful reimagining of a quiet historical footnote: the death of William Shakespeare's only son. Through Maggie O'Farrell's luminous prose, his story, and the story of his mother Agnes Hathaway, becomes an intimate tale of love, loss, and the invisible threads that bind life to art. A profoundly moving novel, Hamnet asks: how do we live after the unimaginable? And what does it mean to remember?

Hamnet resurrects the short life of Hamnet Shakespeare, the Bard’s only son. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a kestrel and its mistress; a flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; and a glovemaker's son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. It is a reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the plays.