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Land by Maggie O’Farrell review – an ambitious story of mapmaking in Ireland

Set in the aftermath of the famine, the Hamnet author’s family saga folds in myth and folklore

‘His father was ever a man of few words,” begins Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th novel, a lengthy and ambitious story set in the aftermath of the Irish famine. Land opens in 1865 on a rainswept Irish peninsula and takes us to Dublin, Rome, Quebec and Kerala as it tells the story of two generations and gestures backwards and forwards at two more. The opening line came to O’Farrell on a train journey from Belfast to Dublin, and became the way in to a story based in part on that of her great-great-grandfather, who worked for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland not long after the great hunger. “What, I wondered, would it have been like to be revising the maps at that time,” she writes in a short introductory note; “to be recording and setting down the devastation that had occurred?”

In bitter weather, Tomás and his 10-year-old son Liam are mapping a peninsula – perhaps Dunmore Head in County Kerry, though O’Farrell doesn’t specify – using surveying poles and measuring chains. Tomás is in the pay of the English, who need him not only for his surveying ability and draughtsmanship, but for his language skills: they cannot easily find out from Irish speakers the names of places, or determine who owns what. It is Tomás’s job to untangle complex local legends and obscure toponyms to create a usable map, and he wants to ensure that the marks left by the famine – the empty houses and graveyards – are recorded on it, though the “redcoats” sign their names to his work. A famine survivor himself, scarred by unspeakable trauma, he tolerates this: as we later discover, assisting the surveyors and learning their trade was his route out of the workhouse. He might not have survived otherwise.

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Maggie O’Farrell: ‘Fiction comes from what you don’t know’

From a young age, the author was told that one of her ancestors had drawn some of the first maps of Ireland. Then she found a photograph, and embarked on a journey to discover his story

Every family has its myths. In mine, we were told that one of our antecedents had worked on the first maps of Ireland. As a child, I used to picture a solitary person in unspecified period dress – a tailcoat, perhaps some kind of cravat – striding pensively about fields and mountains, pen in hand. On summer holidays, I would stare out of the window of our red car as Donegal or Galway rolled by and wonder that such a task could be achieved. How did one man set about drawing a map of a whole country, of these towns and strands and trees and rivers?

All myths comprise a great deal of fanciful embroidery through which runs the distinct thread of truth: time and retelling will always refract reality. This mapper preyed on my mind. I thought about him, always, when I travelled around Ireland. I thought about him in my final year of school, when my geography exam required me to analyse a square of an unknown map. I wanted, as I often do, to know more, about his life, his work, who he had been and how he had mapped.

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‘I am very serious about being silly’: children’s illustrators on the art of storytelling

From The Twits to The Gruffalo and an angry bear in search of his hat… Quentin Blake, Cressida Cowell, Axel Sheffler, Lauren Child and more reveal how they bring children’s books to life

Spread across a sprawling 17th-century industrial complex in London’s Clerkenwell, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, which opens next month, is being billed as the largest institution of its kind anywhere in the world: a permanent national home for an art form that shapes everything from children’s books and political cartoons to animation, fashion, advertising and digital culture. Part museum, part gallery and part creative laboratory, the centre represents an extraordinary attempt to drag illustration out of the margins and finally place it at the heart of British cultural life.

Eventually the centre will become home to Blake’s own enormous archive: 40,000 drawings created by one of the UK’s best-known and most immediately recognisable artists. Now 93, Blake has spent three-quarters of a century bringing the words of some of our most beloved authors to life. Roald Dahl is the big one, of course – it’s impossible to think of Dahl without seeing Blake’s energetic, dip-pen pictures – but the list also includes Michael Rosen, John Yeoman, Sylvia Plath and Voltaire, as well as Blake’s own books. In other words, it’s difficult to find anyone with the same authority.

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Prestige Drama by Séamas O’Reilly review – brilliant wry comedy of Derry and the shadow of the past

A British and American film crew descend on the Northern Irish city to film a drama about the Troubles, in a keenly observed and snappily written debut

The premise of Séamas O’Reilly’s brilliant debut novel is that a Hollywood actor has flown into Derry to star in a new TV series about the Troubles called Dead City, then mysteriously disappeared. But its real interest lies in what happens when a place becomes defined by a particular historical moment, to the extent that stories told about it lapse into formula. As one character says of the TV series: “A young lad coming of age in a time of violence, will he get caught up in everything or find another way through blah blah blah.”

O’Reilly is determined to show us that the people of Derry are not so easily stereotyped. He uses Dead City as a starting point to circle through different characters connected to the series, from a stressed scriptwriter to a local historian who wonders, “How do you talk about the past as a person still living it, in a place that barely survived it?” As we move through the novel, we discover the links between them, creating a patchwork portrait of the city, similar to the way Tommy Orange’s novel There, There used a chorus of voices to explore the lives of Native Americans.

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‘True trailblazer’: British author and activist Maureen Duffy dies aged 92

Duffy wrote novels, plays and poetry, campaigned for gay rights, and was a ‘tireless advocate’ for authors’ rights

Maureen Duffy, author of more than 60 works and a pioneering activist for gay rights and writers’ rights, has died at the age of 92.

Duffy was awarded the inaugural £10,000 Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Pioneer prize last year by Bernardine Evaristo, who described her as a “true trailblazer in every sense of the word”.

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The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris audiobook review – a love letter to our feathered friends

This compendium of 49 of Britain’s threatened species features lyrical prose poems evoking each bird’s unique qualities and beautiful recordings of their distinctive calls

The Book of Birds delivers a stark warning in its introduction about the “great thinning of the skies … Dawns and springs are quieter; the air emptier. An ancient avian orchestra is falling silent.”

There are now 3 billion fewer birds in North America than there were 50 years ago, and 5 million fewer in Europe. Across the world, almost 50% of bird species are in decline. These figures are the galvanising force behind writer and illustrator Jackie Morris and nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s compendium of 49 bird species under threat in Britain. Each entry is a prose poem aimed at evoking the spirit and the unique qualities of each bird, among them the kingfisher, nightingale, nightjar, song thrush, tern, tawny owl and puffin.

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Escaping Babylon by Jesse Bernard review – an intimate history of Black British music

A personal exploration of the sounds that defined a community, from Soul II Soul to Dizzee Rascal

The year 1989 was a landmark in Black British music: Soul II Soul were on their way to conquering America and Sade had already become a global sensation, while A Guy Called Gerald and Nightmares on Wax had the entire Hacienda dancing to their tunes. It’s a fitting moment for Jesse Bernard (who was born in that year) to start his excellent memoir-cum-cultural history, Escaping Babylon. Structured like a mixtape, it skips between skits and short interludes of fiction and poetry, via the loose narrative of Bernard’s own life as he matures from naughty schoolboy (he was expelled for sticking rotten fish in the school’s radiators) to musical explorer, DJ and journalist.

Bernard’s musical education started in his parents’ car, with Mica Paris, Soul II Soul and Carol Wheeler a constant accompaniment. It continued with Craig David performing 7 Days on Top of the Pops in 2000, one of the first times Bernard saw a “distinctly British R&B” singer. Personal memories like this are described alongside interactions with the artists he’s met over the course of his journalistic career to build an argument about the origins and direction of Black British music. Former Saxon sound system emcee Tippa Irie’s observation that reggae is a tree and that all UK sounds are branches that spring from it informs his approach. Through Bernard we meet and engage with many of that tree’s descendants – from UK funky to grime, jungle and drill.

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Novel about ‘Disneyfication’ of nature wins climate fiction prize

Hum, Helen Phillips’ third novel, featuring a woman whose job is taken by a humanoid robot, is a terrifying look into a future where AI rules and nature is scarce

A novel featuring a protagonist whose job is taken by AI has won the Climate fiction prize.

Hum by Helen Phillips, the American writer’s third novel, is about a woman, May, who loses her job to a “hum” of the title – a humanoid robot. Struggling to find work, she becomes a guinea pig for an experimental injection that alters her face so it can’t be recognised by surveillance. When she gets paid for it, she splashes out on family passes to the Botanical Garden, the last remaining green space in her city. There, things take a turn for the worse.

Hum by Helen Phillips (Atlantic Books, £16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Helen Phillips will appear at Hay festival to discuss the book on Friday 30 May

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Fieldwork As a Sex Object by Meena Kandasamy review – story of a deepfake sex tape

The author of When I Hit You returns with a pithy, savagely funny tale of online shaming and the Indian manosphere

We can all agree that the internet today, especially two particular platforms owned by the world’s greatest megalomaniacs, is a hellscape. But if you think X and Facebook are purgatories of friendless trolls endlessly posting hate and bullying women, each other and minorities under the guise of free speech, wait till you experience the Indian version of that netherworld, as captured by novelist and poet Meena Kandasamy. Take the worst algorithms in the world, add a billion-and-a-half people, mix in a far-right government with advanced internet skills and bring on the “burning ghats of Indian politics” that include caste and misogyny as well as roiling ethnic and religious antagonisms, and the western version of X begins to look like a children’s playground.

This is the world that Amy Chaturvedi, a posh student activist-communist living in London, wakes up to one day when the internet is set ablaze by a deepfake sex tape. It’s her face, but it’s not her. Don’t get her wrong, Amy is sexually unapologetic and proudly experimental; she has done plenty of transgressive things, she just didn’t do that one video. But try telling that to the Indian manosphere or, in fact, Amy’s mother. “The main aggressors are a disparate bunch of Nazi-loving, Islamophobic vegetarian dicks with profile pictures that are either the Joker or V for Vendetta,” Kandasamy writes. “If these trolls are to be believed, I am a leading member of the tukde-tukde gang of academics who want to balkanise India. I am on Pakistani payroll. I am funded by George Soros.” She nails the weaselly character of the Indian internet troll, exposing all their shameful secrets – their failures with women, their desire to be followed by Prime Minister Modi (it’s a real thing, look it up), their fear of Muslims, and their rage. Kandasamy’s sharp humour provides much-needed relief from the anger of the internet and I found myself laughing many times at her wicked, tart observations.

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Crossing the Wine Dark Sea by Emily Wilson review – a masterclass in translation

The polarising translator of the Odyssey and the Iliad sets out her philosophy in this fascinating collection

Emily Wilson’s translations of the Odyssey in 2017 and the Iliad in 2023 are now the standard English-language versions, acclaimed for their conciseness and fluency. Her infatuation with Homer began at the age of eight, when her primary school put on a production of the Odyssey, with her in the role of Athena, and the excitement hasn’t worn off. You can question some of the choices she makes in her translations (she questions them herself), but you can’t doubt the months and years she has spent finding the “least bad” compromises.

Her new book is a series of essays on the challenges of translation and the pleasures and insights to be gained from reading the classics. She is fascinated by how far the ancient world intersects with the modern. Aeschylus, Demosthenes, Catullus and Aristophanes are here but so are Spike Lee, Erica Jong, PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves (a last link to the clever servants in Roman comedy) and Boris Johnson (“an incompetent drunkard” who somehow passed as an intellectual “on the basis of his ability to parrot a few garbled lines of Homeric Greek”). Wealthy white men in Silicon Valley get a look-in, too, for embracing Stoicism (not to be confused with stoicism) in “a watered-down form”. Continuities between then and now pile up: war, cruelty and political turmoil. But there are also important contrasts and she scolds those who look back on antiquity as “a mirror in which we always find ourselves”, even when we’re not there.

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