Hamnet

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

“Moving . . . timeless . . . ever-relevant.” —NPR

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ominous threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people.

Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

“Magnificent and searing. . . . So gorgeously written that it transports you.” —The Boston Globe