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Glorious Exploits
Ferdia Lennon
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Description for Glorious Exploits
paperback.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2024
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME
A BBC2 BETWEEN THE COVERS PICK
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION 2024
‘One of the most original and brilliant debuts in years’ Irish Times
‘Bold and totally unexpected ... I was hooked from the first page’ Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
‘Brilliant ... Hilarious, moving, and profound’ R. F. Kuang, author of Yellowface
***
Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: feckless, jobless, in need of a ... Read moredistraction.
Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads.
They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food.
And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.
It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of.
What could possibly go wrong?
***
‘Fierce, funny, fast-paced … Brings the ancient world roaring to life’ Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre
‘Love, war, poetry, reckless ambition, terrible failure, and glorious triumph … A delicious treat of a read. I loved it’ Jon McGregor, author of Lean Fall Stand
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Product Details
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About Ferdia Lennon
FERDIA LENNON was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. A Sunday Times bestseller, it was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and was the winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024. ... Read moreAfter spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son. Show Less
Reviews for Glorious Exploits
One of the most original and brilliant Irish debuts in years
Irish Times
'The debut novelist to watch ... Remarkable ... This debut is entertaining, vivid, original – and has a huge amount of fun turning the genre on its head ... The premise is irresistible ... Terrific ... A novel to be gulped down'
The i ... Read more
Immensely likeable ... Raucously funny ... The writing is beautifully controlled
The Observer
Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book. A brilliant novel about friendship, the healing power of art, and why we must fight for our dreams. I was hooked from the first page
Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
In At Swims-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien gave us cowboys riding through Dublin. Now, Ferdia Lennon gives us modern-day Dubliners living among the ancient Greeks. This is a very special, very clever, very entertaining novel
Roddy Doyle
As thrilling for me as the first time I picked up a Kevin Barry novel. Glorious Exploits is exuberant, funny, lyrical and profoundly moving. It is, quite simply, a rare beauty
Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
Glorious Exploits stinks of misery, despair, love, war, poetry, reckless ambition, terrible failure, and glorious triumph. It’s a novel thick with the stuff of the Classics, in other words. A delicious treat of a read. I loved it
Jon McGregor
Funny, thoughtful, moving, brilliant
Nick Laird, Irish Sunday Independent
With all the blunt humanity of Roddy Doyle, Glorious Exploits is a vividly conjured vision of the past. 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
A blinder of a book, narrated by Lampo in a modern Irish vernacular with all the wit to match. In fewer than 300 pages it also manages to pack in a heap of ideas – about war and art, brotherhood and community, love and loss. A true gem
inews, The Best New Books to Read in January 2024
A glorious thunderbastard, with a unique, stark voice that is expertly drawn. It is cheeky, contemplative and sly with an outrageous sense of humour and a massive heart. Lennon beats you with a club then whispers you poetry. It is harsh and fun in a way that few other books are ... A book like this is long overdue and very welcome. Thank the Gods.
Rory Gleeson, author of Rockadoon Shore
What a voice! What a story! A darkly funny double act from Lampo and Gelon, sandwiched in between the transformative experience of theatre and forgiving your enemies. I loved it from the first line
Claire Fuller
What a truly magnificent novel this is: in turns riotous, brutal and deeply affecting. I am in no doubt that Ferdia Lennon is the real deal. His captivating storytelling resonates with all the beauty of Euripides' plays.
Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
This larky, spirited caper feels like a blast and a breeze ... A delight, both for the originality of its conception and its willingness to pursue such an eccentric idea to its logical conclusion’
Sunday Times
I loved this book. Fierce, funny, fast-paced. Glorious Exploits brings the ancient world roaring to life in a brilliantly non-stuffy way - as if the figures on a Greek vase turned round, offered you wine, and started chatting. Thoroughly enjoyable, occasionally brutal, and shot through with insight, pathos and hope. Reminiscent of Kevin Barry and George Saunders, but wholly original - an unforgettable debut
Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre
A truly original, blackly comic novel
Sunday Independent
Glorious Exploits is an agonising exploration of the cost of violence, for both its winners and losers. It is also a reminder of how dangerous and radical the making of art can be, as the attempt to stage Medea with prisoners-of-war in 412 BC comes to represent war's opposite. This perfect first novel is a tragicomic masterpiece. Ferdia Lennon has created a story worthy of the Athenians: mortal, maddening, heart-mending
Clare Pollard, author of Delphi
Gorgeous
Guardian
At once charming and convincingly gritty. The logistics are riveting enough but Lennon takes them to a conclusion that will move you profoundly, in several directions all at once
Mail on Sunday
Sublime. Pitch-perfect dialogue, a fast-moving story that is both dark and lyrically beautiful, tragic and funny in equal measure. Glorious Exploits is an astonishingly original and gripping story of brotherhood, war and art. Ferdia Lennon is a fierce new talent
Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of Rain
Contemporary yet classical, vulnerable yet self-assured, a beautiful story about the very power of storytelling
Santanu Bhattacharya, author of One Small Voice
Quirkily original ... A tragi-comedy, in homage to Euripides, it is simultaneously shocking, touching, and thought-provoking ... Recounted in a lively Irish brogue, Glorious Exploits has brio and brass neck
The Herald
Engrossing, surprising ... He writes with a wit and an enchantment that very seldom waver ... Expect to encounter a heartfelt, convincing, poetically rendered world [which Lennon has conjured from] the ocean of his own defiantly original sensibility
Literary Review
Wonderfully odd, riotously funny ... This superb novel builds to a page-turning crescendo that evokes the great tragedy the men stage'
Booklist
Very funny ... Lennon is good on the art of direction. He is good, too, on historical contingency
Times Literary Supplement
Lennon evokes a time when it was common to relish and revere the art of Homer’s poetry and Euripides’ drama. Those with that appetite today are fortunate to have Madeline Miller, Emily Wilson, Pat Barker, and recently James Hynes’ Sparrow. And Lennon. An entertaining and impressive debut
Kirkus Starred Review
Glorious Exploits is a celebration of stories and storytelling lavishing in the emotional power of the arts, and one that’s especially apt in dealing with the fallout of the Peloponnesian War at a time when, in our present reality, fighting has left cities in rubble and millions of people facing starvation. Lennon offers a window through which to see past the fog of messy politics and view these tragedies with empathy
AP book reviews
Brilliant ... I love contemporary Irish fiction and Greek tragedy, so how wonderful to find a novel where they are brilliantly paired. It is as hilarious, moving, and profound as promised
Rebecca F. Kuang, author of Yellowface
This larky, spirited caper stands out in the glut of novels we get these days inspired by Greek and Roman myths ... It’s a risky way to write a classical story, but full of skittish, eccentric energy. It pays off.
The Times, 100 best summer reads for 2024
Entertaining and original ... You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll have a blast
Daily Mail
Inspired, incredibly, by real events, Ferdia Lennon’s fantastic first novel is written in a wonderfully Irish vernacular that brings the ancient world to vivid, witty, moving life
The Irish Times – Summer reading
Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits will be hard to beat this year as a feat of imagination…A tragicomedy that will stand the test of time
The Irish Times – The best books of 2024 so far
One of the most original and entertaining and moving books I've read in such a long time. There are some books you read that you will never forget. And this is this book.
Annie MacManus
Although it conjures an engrossing ancient Greek world, it also makes us feel like its story is happening now ... By bringing that truth so fiercely alive, Lennon has given us a fiction that does not remain safely historical
Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books
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