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, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain
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
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, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha.
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 is 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 (Fiction pick for January)
Advanced Praise for Glorious Exploits
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
Contemporary yet classical, vulnerable yet self-assured, a beautiful story about the very power of storytelling.
Santanu Bhattacharya, author of One Small Voice.
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
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
This exuberant tragicomedy set in ancient Sicily during the Peloponnesian War and narrated in contemporary Irish dialect is like nothing I’ve read – it contains all life’s darkness while celebrating friendship, love, mercy and hope.
The Bookseller (Book of the Month pick)
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, Costa Book Award-winning author of In the Days of Rain
A glorious thunder-bastard, 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
Funny, thoughtful, moving, brilliant
Nick Laird, Irish Sunday Independent
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
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
Exploring themes of friendship, loyalty, and the toll of war, 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 Reviews (starred review)
Lennon brings ancient Sicily to life with humor and pathos in his stunning debut. . . . [this] vital tale captivates.
―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Irish-born Lennon’s distinctly modern voice adds levity and wit to this highly recommended narrative about the tragic aftermath of war and the tragic beauty of the human condition.”
―Library Journal (starred review)