The No. 1 bestseller - Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction

**Now a major film by Chloe Zhao starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal**

'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times

'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell

A love that draws them together. A loss that threatens to tear them apart.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help.

Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.