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 Peloponnesian war rages, and the Sicilian city of Syracuse has been “turned inside out and on its head” by a failed Athenian invasion. New trade routes are opening, fresh injections of capital are augmenting a crumbling civic infrastructure, and bustling portside taverns brim with gold, enslaved people and democratic idealism. But while Syracuse flourishes, reminders of violence so recently endured are everywhere – not least in the limestone quarries on the outskirts of the city, where thousands of Athenian prisoners have been left, chained, to starve out their last days under a white-hot Mediterranean sun.
