Ferdia Lennon, 36, was born and raised in Dublin. His first novel, Glorious Exploits, set in ancient Sicily, was the winner of this yearâs Waterstones debut fiction prize. It follows two jobless potters who decide to co-direct a play performed by Athenian prisoners of war. The New York Times called it âa comic riff on Greek tragedy, with an Irish accentâ; for Roddy Doyle, itâs a tale of âmodern-day Dubliners living among ancient Greeksâ. Lennon spoke from his home in Norwich.
Tell us where this novel began.
Iâve been fascinated by ancient Greece since I was a kid. Then I read History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, a chronicle of the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta, which spilled out across the Mediterranean world. Athens launched this unprovoked invasion of Sicily, primarily against Syracuse, the main power. They thought: âWeâll be done in a few months and itâll help us win in Greece.â It ends up with thousands of Athenian prisoners being flung into a quarry outside the city of Syracuse. I knew I wanted to write about that, but didnât yet know my angle. Then a couple of years later, I was reading Plutarchâs Life of Nicias, where he describes how some of those defeated Athenians survived by quoting lines from Euripides, the most popular dramatist amongst the Sicilians. I thought, OK, thatâs my story: who were these Syracusans who left Athenian prisoners to die in this open-air pit, yet were so fascinated by their drama that theyâre willing to save them in exchange for these precious lines?
What led you to centre the action on two unemployed friends?
Some of my favourite books and films are about friendship: Don Quixote, Withnail & I⦠Starving Athenians in a quarry in 412BCE is completely beyond the pale of what people are familiar with, but you can ground it in a friendship that people will understand. Most people have experienced that sense of their life not necessarily going quite the way that theyâd hoped, some unrealised or unfulfilled ambitions.
Why did you write it in a Dublin voice?
Why not? Iâm not going to write in an ancient Greek or fifth-century BC Syracusan dialect. Thereâs always a decision about which version of English to use. At first I was thinking: this is coming out quite Irish, do I pull back or double down? For me, it made sense to double down. I was tired of ancient Greek or Roman characters sounding as if theyâve stepped out of a Merchant Ivory production. Sicily had been colonised by mainland Greece: it made sense to me that the Greek they speak would be a bit different, the way Hiberno-English is a bit different. And Syracuse is the biggest city in Sicily, so the Dublin voice made sense. The Greek world wasnât a monoculture: youâve got different dialects, different classes, immigration, a massive slave trade. The language was a way to try to capture some of that difference.
Have you ever been involved in theatre?
No, my only performance has been as Frankenstein in a London Dungeon knock-off â I lasted about a couple of hours! I lived in Paris for a while and had friends who ran an amateur theatre group. Iâd watch their rehearsals but never actually acted myself. I love cinema, though. As a kid my older brother was really into films, so we just had exposure to things you wouldnât normally see at a young age: Kubrick, Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, who I love. Watching spaghetti westerns helped me indirectly with this book.
How did you first get interested in history?
I think I just liked good stories. Early on at school we had this textbook called Footprints and the interesting thing was that the early sections were versions of Irish myths and then as it went on it became straight-up history. It didnât differentiate between them: like, chapter one was about Cú Chulainn, whoâs one of the key Irish mythic heroes, then chapter 10 was about Kennedy! But maybe at some level that made a link between myth and narrative and history.
How do you explain the current wave of successful Irish novelists?
I remember that when I was a student, James Joyceâs house was five minutes up the road: just seeing that plaque, thereâs something nice about having that literary history celebrated around you. On a practical level, the structures in Ireland make it easier for writers. An Arts Council grant helped me write this book. I wasnât in any way established, but you could submit a work in progress to a panel of your peers and if youâre lucky, you might get money that will give you a couple of months that could be the break. I feel part of the burgeoning moment in Irish literature has to do with the financial crash. A whole generation was devastated, in Ireland maybe more than most. There were no jobs, so you felt freer to do what you wanted, even if it made no money; I started writing in Granada [in Spain] while unemployed.
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