320 pages | Paperback

Miraculous. Brilliant. A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayeror curse.The Washington Post

The extraordinarily received, deeply moving novel from the acclaimed author ofI Am, I Am, I Amabout the death of Shakespeares eleven-year-old son Hamneta name interchangeable with Hamlet in fifteenth-century Britainand the years leading up to the production of his great play.

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting healthy and sick, old and young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutorpenniless and bullied by a violent fatherfalls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her familys 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 taking off when their beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time,Hamnetis mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put downa magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.