Description
Author: Ferdia Lennon
Format: Trade Paperback C Format
Publication date: 23/01/2024
Imprint: FIG TREE
ISBN: 9780241667224
An exhilarating and fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art, set in ancient Sicily
So Gelon says to me, ‘Let’s go down and feed the Athenians. The weather’s perfect for feeding Athenians.’
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.
Doug Leveridge –
A group of Athenian prisoners are held captive in a Sicilian limestone quarry, amid the chaotic fallout of the Peloponnesian Wars.
A pair of locals bribe their way into this detention camp with no serious plan, but soon befriend the prisoners, survivors close to starvation, and, with locals in tow, a plan is formed to stage two famous Greek plays. The process is fraught with challenges and violence, not a little humour, and to add extra comic oomph, is voiced in the writer’s contemporary Irish vernacular style.
A stunning, assured debut novel.
– Doug