The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce began her artistic career as an actor, not a writer. She later became a playwright for BBC Radio, creating adaptations of classic novels by authors like Henry James and the Brontë sisters. She was inspired to write The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold J. Fry after her father’s cancer diagnosis. In a Daily Mail interview, she admits that writing the novel became a way to process her grief; she felt that by writing about him, she might somehow keep him alive. Joyce also saw herself in the character of Harold, as she viewed her first attempt at writing a novel as a type of quest or pilgrimage. Like Harold, Joyce often felt she had begun a journey she might not be able to complete.

The story was originally published as a radio play in 2007 called To Be a Pilgrim and was later adapted into the novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. In the novel, Joyce intends to portray many of her father’s character traits: she views him as a man who lived a small, quotidian lifestyle that is nonetheless heroic for the way he cared for and supported his family. Joyce, believing laughter is the place where

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