Irish authors reading list

Reading lists

10 must-read books by Irish authors

New historical fiction books to read in 2025

Ferdia Lennon

One of the most original and brilliant Irish debuts in years

'The debut novelist to watch ... Remarkable ... This debut is entertaining, vivid, original – and has a huge amount of fun turning the genre on its head ... The premise is irresistible ... Terrific ... A novel to be gulped down'

Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book. A brilliant novel about friendship, the healing power of art, and why we must fight for our dreams. I was hooked from the first page

Immensely likeable ... Raucously funny ... The writing is beautifully controlled

Brilliant ... I love contemporary Irish fiction and Greek tragedy, so how wonderful to find a novel where they are brilliantly paired. It is as hilarious, moving, and profound as promised

As thrilling for me as the first time I picked up a Kevin Barry novel. Glorious Exploits is exuberant, funny, lyrical and profoundly moving. It is, quite simply, a rare beauty

Glorious Exploits stinks of misery, despair, love, war, poetry, reckless ambition, terrible failure, and glorious triumph. It’s a novel thick with the stuff of the Classics, in other words. A delicious treat of a read. I loved it

In At Swims-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien gave us cowboys riding through Dublin. Now, Ferdia Lennon gives us modern-day Dubliners living among the ancient Greeks. This is a very special, very clever, very entertaining novel

One of the best debut novels of the year – it even received an award saying so – this is a ridiculously fun book…It's a poignant story about war, art, and friendship, while also being very funny

iPaper – The 30 best books for Christmas 2024

With all the blunt humanity of Roddy Doyle, Glorious Exploits is a vividly conjured vision of the past. Madly ambitious, cathartic like all great tragedy, but shockingly funny too, Ferdia Lennon's outstandingly original début is just glorious

A glorious thunderbastard, with a unique, stark voice that is expertly drawn. It is cheeky, contemplative and sly with an outrageous sense of humour and a massive heart. Lennon beats you with a club then whispers you poetry. It is harsh and fun in a way that few other books are ... A book like this is long overdue and very welcome. Thank the Gods.

One of the most original and entertaining and moving books I've read in such a long time. There are some books you read that you will never forget. And this is this book.

The invention and confidence of Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits, which brings a modern Irish vernacular to Ancient Sicily, makes him a writer to watch

A poignant and moving novel, based on a historical event…Lennon weaves a story that intertwines themes such as friendship, love, compassion and the power of artistic creation

What a voice! What a story! A darkly funny double act from Lampo and Gelon, sandwiched in between the transformative experience of theatre and forgiving your enemies. I loved it from the first line

What a truly magnificent novel this is: in turns riotous, brutal and deeply affecting. I am in no doubt that Ferdia Lennon is the real deal. His captivating storytelling resonates with all the beauty of Euripides' plays.

Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

This larky, spirited caper feels like a blast and a breeze ... A delight, both for the originality of its conception and its willingness to pursue such an eccentric idea to its logical conclusion’

I loved this book. Fierce, funny, fast-paced. Glorious Exploits brings the ancient world roaring to life in a brilliantly non-stuffy way - as if the figures on a Greek vase turned round, offered you wine, and started chatting. Thoroughly enjoyable, occasionally brutal, and shot through with insight, pathos and hope. Reminiscent of Kevin Barry and George Saunders, but wholly original - an unforgettable debut

Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre

A truly original, blackly comic novel

Glorious Exploits is an agonising exploration of the cost of violence, for both its winners and losers. It is also a reminder of how dangerous and radical the making of art can be, as the attempt to stage Medea with prisoners-of-war in 412 BC comes to represent war's opposite. This perfect first novel is a tragicomic masterpiece. Ferdia Lennon has created a story worthy of the Athenians: mortal, maddening, heart-mending

At once charming and convincingly gritty. The logistics are riveting enough but Lennon takes them to a conclusion that will move you profoundly, in several directions all at once

Quirkily original ... A tragi-comedy, in homage to Euripides, it is simultaneously shocking, touching, and thought-provoking ... Recounted in a lively Irish brogue, Glorious Exploits has brio and brass neck

Engrossing, surprising ... He writes with a wit and an enchantment that very seldom waver ... Expect to encounter a heartfelt, convincing, poetically rendered world [which Lennon has conjured from] the ocean of his own defiantly original sensibility

Entertaining and original ... You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll have a blast

Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits will be hard to beat this year as a feat of imagination…A tragicomedy that will stand the test of time

The Irish Times – The best books of 2024 so far

Although it conjures an engrossing ancient Greek world, it also makes us feel like its story is happening now ... By bringing that truth so fiercely alive, Lennon has given us a fiction that does not remain safely historical

The characters speak in a wonderfully sweary, and very modern, Irish vernacular – bizarre and brilliant. The author won this year’s Waterstones debut fiction prize for the book earlier this year

The Independent – Best fiction books of 2024

The most reckless, exhilarating thing I read all year…The writing is supple and gorgeous, but it’s the mad ambition of Lennon’s project that will stay with me a good long time

Olivia Laing, The TLS – Books of the Year 2024

Anne Enright, Irish Times, Books of the Year

The one that really stands out for me is Ferdia Lennon's charismatic debut ... Brilliant and original ... Profound and funny

Edel Coffey, Irish Times, Books of the Year

Martin Doyle, Irish Times, Books of the Year

A blinder of a book, narrated by Lampo in a modern Irish vernacular with all the wit to match. In fewer than 300 pages it also manages to pack in a heap of ideas – about war and art, brotherhood and community, love and loss. A true gem

inews, The Best New Books to Read in January 2024

Contemporary yet classical, vulnerable yet self-assured, a beautiful story about the very power of storytelling

Santanu Bhattacharya, author of One Small Voice

Wonderfully odd, riotously funny ... This superb novel builds to a page-turning crescendo that evokes the great tragedy the men stage'

Sublime. Pitch-perfect dialogue, a fast-moving story that is both dark and lyrically beautiful, tragic and funny in equal measure. Glorious Exploits is an astonishingly original and gripping story of brotherhood, war and art. Ferdia Lennon is a fierce new talent

Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of Rain

Tells an inspired story ... It turns into the funniest, most surprising, and most sneakily moving novel I read all year.

No ordinary book with no ordinary humour…its vivacious, intellectually engaged and acidly controlled bawdiness if a perfect read for this time of the year…Lennon is a brilliant new voice of limpid, knowing prose

The Big Issue – Big Issue critics’ books of 2024 (Patrick Maxwell)

Absolutely extraordinary ... I am so obsessed with Ferdia Lennon's writing ... Deeply romantic, tragic, funny, hopeful

Caroline O'Donoghue, author of The Rachel Incident

Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: lovesick, jobless, in need of a distraction. 
 
Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads. 
 
They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food. 
 
And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry. 
 
It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of. 
 
What could possibly go wrong?

Ferdia Lennon

Praise for Glorious Exploits

One of the most original and brilliant Irish debuts in years

'The debut novelist to watch ... Remarkable ... This debut is entertaining, vivid, original – and has a huge amount of fun turning the genre on its head ... The premise is irresistible .. ...

Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book. A brilliant novel about friendship, the healing power of art, and why we must fight for our dreams. I was hooked from the first page

One of the most original and brilliant Irish debuts in years

'The debut novelist to watch ... Remarkable ... This debut is entertaining, vivid, original – and has a huge amount of fun turning the genre on its head ... The premise is irresistible .. ...

Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book. A brilliant novel about friendship, the healing power of art, and why we must fight for our dreams. I was hooked from the first page

One of the most original and brilliant Irish debuts in years

'The debut novelist to watch ... Remarkable ... This debut is entertaining, vivid, original – and has a huge amount of fun turning the genre on its head ... The premise is irresistible .. ...

Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book. A brilliant novel about friendship, the healing power of art, and why we must fight for our dreams. I was hooked from the first page

Articles featuring Ferdia Lennon

10 must-read books by Irish authors

New historical fiction books to read in 2025

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter