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Maggie O’Farrell, writer: Identity is complicated

Maggie O’Farrell, writer: Identity is complicated

The Interview vor 3 Monaten

Katie Razzall speaks to acclaimed writer Maggie O’Farrell about her work

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“I was born in Coleraine, then I moved to Wales and then I moved
to Ireland. It's very complicated and I feel there's a strange
sense if you grow up somewhere different from where you were
born. That's just true of everyone. If your accent doesn't match
your name - as in my case - I think you walk alongside all your
life a kind of ghost-self in that there's always a sense of ‘who
would I have been if we'd stayed?’”

Katie Razzall speaks to acclaimed writer Maggie O’Farrell. The
54-year-old has been a published author for more than 25 years,
with her books translated into more than 40 languages.

O’Farrell shot to wider international fame following the
award-winning screen adaptation of her 2020 novel Hamnet, a story
about the son of the English playwright William Shakespeare.

She’s now publishing Land, her sweeping new tale centred around
an Irish map-maker working for the British army at the time of
the Great Famine in Ireland in the mid-19th century. Between 1845
and 1852, at least one million people died due to starvation and
disease, with a further two million people fleeing Ireland to
escape the famine.

The book is about colonisation and devastation, set against a
backdrop of families left to die of starvation on estates owned
by British aristocrats and landowners. Drawing on her own family
history during that period, it’s O’Farrell’s most political work
yet - and as she explains, its themes still resonate with the
world today. The Interview brings you conversations with people
shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews
from the BBC, including episodes with Oscar-winning director
Chloe Zhao, author Sir Salman Rushdie, and comedian Eric Idle.
You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a
podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get
your podcasts.

Presenter: Katie Razzall Producers: Ben Cooper and Roxanne
Panthaki Editors: Farhana Haider and Justine Lang

Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the
hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.

(Image: Maggie O’Farrell. Credit: Getty)