Hamnet (novel)

Hamnet
First edition
AuthorMaggie O'Farrell
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical fiction
Published31 March 2020
PublisherTinder Press
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Pages384
AwardsWomen's Prize (2020),
National Book Critics (2020)
ISBN978-1472223791
(1st ed. UK Hardcover)
OCLC1104658967
823/.914
LC ClassPR6065.F36 H35 2020

Hamnet is a 2020 novel by Maggie O'Farrell. It is a fictional account of William Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, who died at age eleven in 1596, focusing on his parents' grief. In Canada, the novel was published under the title Hamnet & Judith.

In 2020, the book won the Women's Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; that December, it was also chosen as Waterstones' Book Of The Year. The following year, it was named "Novel of the Year" at the Dalkey Literary Awards, was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was described in Literary Review as "a rich story by any stretch of the imagination, and O'Farrell's stretches much, much further than most of ours."