Glorious Exploits

Set in the Sicily of 412 BC, Lennon's at once riotously funny and incredibly moving novel finds two locals and a bunch of captured Athenian soldiers staging two of Euripides’ greatest tragedies in a quarry.

Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: lovesick, jobless, in need of a distraction.

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?

Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2025

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025