A zoom call with Oscar winning director Chloé Zhao convinced Irish British novelist Maggie O'Farrell to agree to a film adaptation of her novel Hamnet - her 2020 work of historical fiction which reimagines the personal tragedy that inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet. Zhao and O'Farrell then co-wrote the screenplay for the multi-Oscar and BAFTA nominated film starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. O'Farrell's forthcoming novel Land, her tenth, is set in the aftermath of the The Great Famine of 1865 which resulted in around one million people dying of starvation. The screen rights for the novel have been acquired by Hera Pictures, the same production company which made Hamnet. Maggie O'Farrell talks to Susie about the thrill of her books being adapted for the screen.

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