Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O'Farrell's works explore her particular vision of the past, family relationships and the origins of grief and loss. With the dazzling Hamnet (published in Catalan by L'Altra and in Spanish by Libros del Asteroide, 2021), O'Farrell immersed herself in Elizabethan theater and discovered who might be behind the literary figure of Hamlet. In The Marriage Portrait (published in Catalan by L'Altra and in Spanish by Libros del Asteroide, 2023), Maggie O'Farrell's long-awaited latest novel, the author takes us back to the past, in this case to Renaissance Italy, to the Medici’s court. Inspired by Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess, which describes an enigmatic portrait of Lucrezia de Medici by the painter Bronzino, O'Farrell recreates a fictional account of the captivating Duchess de Medici and immerses us in a story about power, politics and the protagonist's struggle for her own survival.