Maggie O’Farrell on ‘Hamnet’

The Book Review

The New York Times

Arts, Books

4.0 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

O’Farrell discusses her novel about Shakespeare and his family, and Judith Shulevitz talks about Rachel Cusk’s “Second Place.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you imagine the relationship between Shakespeare and his wife?
0:10.2	Maggie O'Farrell joins us to talk about her most recent novel, Hamnet.
0:16.4	What's Rachel Cusk up to in her latest novel?
0:20.4	Judith Schulovitz will be here to talk about second place and Cusk's approach to fiction.
0:27.8	Alexander Alder will be here with the latest in publishing news.
0:33.0	Plus, our critics will join us for the latest in literary criticism.
0:38.4	This is the Book of You podcast from The New York Times.
0:41.4	It's May 21st.
0:43.3	I'm Pamela Paul.
0:53.7	This is John Williams.
0:55.4	In Hamnet, her eighth novel, Maggie O'Farrell imagines the life of William Shakespeare, his wife
1:00.3	and half-away, or Agnes, and the life and death of one of the couple's children, Hamnet,
1:05.1	who died at 11 in 1596.
1:08.2	In O'Farrell's novel, he dies of the plague and the book imagines the impact that this event
1:12.4	might have had on arguably Shakespeare's greatest play, Hamlet.
1:16.4	Hamnet won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and it was named by the New
1:19.6	York Times Book Review as one of its 10 best books of 2020 with the editors calling it
1:24.6	a bold feat of imagination and empathy.
1:27.7	And Maggie O'Farrell is here to talk about it from Edinburgh.
1:30.6	Hi Maggie.
1:31.6	Hi how are you doing?
1:33.0	I'm good.
	...

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