1 week ago
Maggie O’Farrell’s Land Maps Memory, Colonialism and Belonging
Land is a novel about a family living in Ireland many years ago.
The country is being measured and mapped by British officials.
Tomás helps make these maps, but he worries that they leave out the meanings important to local people.
He wants to create another map showing old names, sacred places and abandoned villages.
His children are separated by poverty and migration.
The story travels across generations and connects their lives through objects and places.
A well, a gold ring, dogs and water appear again and again.
These things show that the past can remain part of the present.
The book asks whether people can still feel that they belong after losing their homes and being separated from one another.
Maggie O’Farrell’s Land is set mainly in 19th-century Ireland under British rule.
The novel follows Irish surveyor Tomás and his four children through poverty, migration and religious authority.
Tomás works for the British Ordnance Survey but plans an alternative map preserving local names, sacred places and abandoned villages.
Recurring wells, rings, dogs and water connect different generations and keep the past present.
The novel uses fiction to restore individuality to people obscured by colonial records, famine and emigration.
- Who
- Irish surveyor Tomás, his children Liam, Enda, Rose and Eugene, and the communities whose lives are obscured by official records.
- What
- A historical novel examines mapping, colonial rule, migration, religious authority, dispossession and the survival of memory and belonging.
- Where
- Ireland, especially a peninsula surveyed by British officials, with the children’s journeys carrying the story beyond it.
- When
- The story is set principally in 19th-century Ireland and revisits the peninsula across centuries.
- Why
- The novel explores what happens when land is measured, renamed and controlled, and how fiction can preserve local identities and forgotten lives.
Key facts
- Book
- Land
- Author
- Maggie O’Farrell
- Publisher
- Tinder
- Price
- ₹799
- Central character
- Tomás, an Irish surveyor employed by the British Ordnance Survey
- Historical setting
- Principally 19th-century Ireland
- Core idea
- Official maps can record territory while erasing the memories, names and meanings attached to it
Sources
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