Glorious Exploits

Winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction • Winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize • Winner of the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award • Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction • Shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year by the Irish Book Awards • Shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards Debut Fiction Prize • Shortlisted for the British Book Award for Debut Fiction Book of the Year • Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence

Named a Best Book of 2024 by Slate, the Guardian, and the New York Public Library

An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.