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#56 of 8,085 books · #18 in Historical Fiction

Won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2020) and the Women's Prize for Fiction (2020). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 1 other award.

Hamnet won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a New York Times bestseller. England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present 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.

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Publisher
Vintage
ISBN-13
9780525657613
Topics
Grief and lossHistorical family lifeMotherhoodMarriagePlague and mortality

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