Glorious Exploits

'Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book' Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain

'A very special, very clever, very entertaining novel' Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha


It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads.

Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives.

And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry.

But as the performance draws near and the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends. And Lampo, whose ambitions have never stretched beyond having enough coin for the next jug of wine, finds his aspirations elevated, his heart entangled and his courage tested in ways he could never have imagined.

Glorious Exploits is an exhilarating and fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art; and - in the face of the Gods' apparent indifference - of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.

'Madly ambitious, cathartic like all great tragedy, but shockingly funny too, Ferdia Lennon's outstandingly original début is just glorious' Emma Donoghue, author of Room