Ferdia Lennon has won this year’s Waterstones debut fiction prize for his “riotous, exuberant treat of a novel”, Glorious Exploits.
The novel, which took about seven years to write, is set in Syracuse in 412BC, in the aftermath of Athens’ failed invasion of Sicily. It follows two locals who decide to stage an adaptation of Medea in a quarry where Athenian soldiers are held captive, using the prisoners as actors.
Lennon was announced as the winner at a ceremony in the Waterstones’ Piccadilly branch in London on Thursday evening. He receives £5,000 and the “promise of ongoing commitment” to his career.
“Lennon brings the ancient world to life in Technicolor, from the horrors of war to the moments of hilarity to be found in the mundane, with a charmingly eccentric cast of characters,” said Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones.
Lennon was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Libyan father, and studied history and classics at University College Dublin and prose fiction at the University of East Anglia. He now lives in Norwich with his wife and son.
“My fascination for ancient Greece began as a child,” said Lennon. “However, not being personally acquainted with any gods or mythical heroes, I decided to tell my novel from the perspective of two ordinary lads with a love of story.
“It had always struck me that ancient Greek comedy, such as that of Aristophanes, has something of the ribald, irreverent humour I grew up with in Dublin and that blending this with the universal themes of classical tragedy would be one way to evoke a living breathing ancient world that felt contemporary.”
Lennon said that inspiration for the plot came from a “chance discovery of a line from Plutarch, where we learn that Athenian prisoners of war survived by quoting lines from Euripides’ plays to their Sicilian captors”.
In a Guardian review of the novel, AK Blakemore wrote: “[It]clips along in a tidy prose judiciously filigreed with some lovely image-making and the odd Homeric epithet: the sun is ‘white and fat like a gluttonous star’, the skin on a worker’s fingers puckers ‘like curdled milk’, an actor’s hands twist in the air ‘like strange flowers in a storm’.”
Shortlisted alongside Glorious Exploits were Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, The Silence In Between by Josie Ferguson, Mongrel by Hanako Footman and Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly.
Glorious Exploits “is a riotous, exuberant treat of a novel, which celebrates the redemptive power of art, and the catharsis to be found in storytelling,” said Carvalho. “A masterclass in tragicomedy, firmly rooted in classical tradition and yet strikingly, unapologetically new, Glorious Exploits is madly ambitious and devastatingly affecting, but above all pure page-turning joy from start to finish.”
The prize is open to debut fiction of all genres, and the winner is chosen by a panel of Waterstones booksellers. It launched in 2022, and Tess Gunty was the inaugural winner with The Rabbit Hutch. Last year, Alice Winn won the prize for her novel In Memoriam.
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Penguin Books Ltd, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
