Ferdia

This immensely likable debut novel from Irish writer Ferdia Lennon opens in Syracuse, south-east Sicily, in 412BC. The city has lately defeated a military expedition from Athens and thousands of surviving invaders have been thrown into nearby quarries to rot. No Syracusans lament their fate until two locals visit one day with an idea to cast the prisoners in a play by Euripides.The two men are Gelon, a melancholy theatre obsessive, and his wisecracking friend Lampo, who narrates the novel in a distinctly un-Sicilian…

Stories about the power of stories are an easy sell; in part, I think, because they subtly ennoble the producer and the consumer of those stories, shedding a glow of valour on the profession of the former and chosen leisure pursuit of the latter. Ferdia Lennon’s debut novel, Glorious Exploits, is very much a story about the power of stories – and the spiritual and emotional succour they give – though, fortunately, too much of a clever one to fall entirely into the mode of blithe self-congratulation.It is 412BC, the…