We all have a type, whether you’re talking art, books or sexual partners. Thinking about this newsletter, it became abundantly clear what mine is when it comes to historical fiction.
Tragicomedy, blending darkness with humour
Roguish, morally grey heroes
A distinctive, often irreverent narrative voice
An inventive use of language
It seems I’m not alone, as Ferdia Lennon’s debut Glorious Exploits – a riotous cocktail of these elements – exploded onto last year’s literary scene, racking up accolades including the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. The Irish author is at the forefront of a literary new wave reinterpreting history through a working-class lens – a far cry from the courtly dalliances and regal finery often evoked by the term “historical fiction”.
Like his hero Hilary Mantel, Lennon approaches an historical turning point – the unsuccessful Athenian invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War – from an unexpected angle, telling a tale of Athens and theatre through the eyes of an illiterate Syracusan potter. Lennon is interested in “invisible history” – giving voice to the hoi polloi, because history is usually written not just by the victors, but by the elites.
Elite his characters are not. His narrator Lampo, a loveable beta male with a limp and a lot to learn, is scrabbling for purchase on the lower rungs of Sicilian society, and sounds like someone you would have the craic with down the pub. “He’s like a Dublin character I knew well from where I grew up,” said Lennon when I interviewed him ahead of the novel’s publication.
What unites these four novels, despite their distinct settings – ancient Sicily, nineteenth-century Montana, Tudor England, and England during the Wars of the Roses – is entertainment value. No elaborate descriptions of lace, no boring battles; just human drama and crackling dialogue from characters that feel as alive as we are.
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, Penguin, £9.99, pb.
In a nutshell: Hold onto your laurel wreaths, for this exuberant debut, written in contemporary Irish vernacular, takes you on a wild ride into antiquity as you’ve never seen it before.
It was inspired by a reference in Plutarch’s Lives to the fact that some Athenian prisoners survived captivity in Syracuse by quoting Euripides to the poetry-loving Sicilians. From this unexplored footnote Lennon spins a tragicomic tale of working-class ambition, which rises from the ashes of war to bring mercy and friendship.
It is 412 BC, and two unemployed Syracuan potters, Lampo and Gelon, secretly stage Medea and The Trojan Women with an all-prisoner cast, whom they rescue from starvation. Yet since the Athenians are personae non gratae in Sicily, the potters find themselves taking greater risks than they’d ever imagined for the love of Euripides.
In dancing prose, Lennon conjures ancient Syracuse, at once a thrusting young democracy and a brutal society beset by conquest and inequality. As bittersweet and unpredictable as life itself, Glorious Exploits whisks you away on Lampo’s moral journey of self-discovery while celebrating love and forgiveness.
Order here.
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry, Canongate, £9.99, pb.
In a nutshell: This rollicking Western follows the escape of two lovers into the wilderness from a hard-living Irish migrant town in 1891 Montana.
It is the fourth novel from the Irish author of Night Boat to Tangier, City of Bohane and Beatlebone, whose many awards include the Goldsmiths Prize and the Sunday Times Short Story Award.
When love strikes two damaged souls, an opium-fiend poet and the dissatisfied bride of the pious mine captain, they steal a horse and flee into the badlands of Montana and Idaho with crazed Cornish gunslingers in hot pursuit.
With its technicolour cast of eccentrics doing whatever it takes to survive, this cinematic adventure, rendered with Barry’s savage wit and salty lyricism, is both tragic and farcical.
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The Pretender by Jo Harkin, Bloomsbury, £18.99, hb.
In a nutshell: In fifteenth-century England, an innocent farm lad is groomed for the crown and is gradually warped by political intrigue.
1480: the royal houses of York and Lancaster lock horns. Richard III is not long for the throne, while the future Henry VII sees threats everywhere. Enter 12-year-old John Collan, snatched from obscurity, polished in Oxford and catapulted into courtly life in Burgundy and Ireland as Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, heir to the throne.
A fly caught in a spider's web, John must learn wiles and guile to withstand this treacherous world of double crosses and shifting identities, under the tutelage of Joan, the bewitching daughter of the Irish Lord Deputy.
Winningly pitched as “Brat Wolf Hall”, this irrepressible caper through one of England’s most ruthless periods is a heady melange of ambition, corruption, deception and revenge. Harkin’s language manages to be both archaic and very funny – blunt, filthy, yet adorned with the flourishes of the age.
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A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike, Fig Tree, £9.99, pb.
In a nutshell: Tudor England appears as never before in this rambunctious picaresque novel with a Chaucerian feel, based on a real-life hoax. This bestselling debut was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.
I defy you to resist the raw energy and subversive wit of the narrator, foul-mouthed, big-hearted Tibb, who was inspired by Elizabeth, the 'holy maid of Leominster', a medieval conwoman who pretended to be an angel and amassed a cult following.
Tibb's exploits with her ragtag crew of vagrants take her from Norfolk to Peterborough, Weymouth to Shropshire, as their daring scheme takes on a life of its own. An impish, beguiling story about daring to strive for better in an unfair society.
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