Ferdia Lennon wins Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

RCL author Ferdia Lennon has won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024 for Glorious Exploits (published by Penguin Fig Tree)!

In theirannouncement, the team at Waterstones write:

“From the start, our booksellers fell in love with the immense humanity and humour of Lennon’s unique, profound and ferociously funny work that transports readers to the Sicily of 412 BCE and stages an extraordinary story of friendship, art and ambition against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War.

Narrated with endless comic brilliance and a rollicking, distinctly Irish voice, Glorious Exploits follows a pair of unemployed Syracusan potters who decide to put on two of Euripides’ greatest plays in a sun-baked quarry, using captured Athenian soldiers as their cast. Wildly clever, utterly disarming and filled with moments of deepest tragedy and unexpected beauty, Lennon’s debut is a heartfelt, exhilarating tribute to the power of storytelling and the value of forgiveness.”

Bea Carvalho, the Head of Books at Waterstones, writes:

‘‘Lennon brings the ancient world to life in technicolour, from the horrors of war to the moments of hilarity to be found in the mundane, with a charmingly eccentric cast of characters. It is a riotous, exuberant treat of a novel, which celebrates the redemptive power of art. Glorious Exploits is madly ambitious and devastatingly affecting, but above all pure page-turning joy from start to finish.’’

The Guardian, the Bookseller, the Irish Times, and BookBrunch have covered Ferdia’s win.

In this video, Ferdia discusses the novel.