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I LOVED this book. And yet, I immediately feel the need to very sparingly recommend it, because it's one of those ones that I would not have thought I would love, if I knew what it was before I read it. Sure, the ancient Greek part, the discussion of Euripides' plays is a draw. I can get on board with bringing a smaller scale, down-to-earth focus on a few characters to historical or 'from the distant past' events, 1/?

#12Booksof2024 i had a number of surprise 5-star reads to round out 2024, but i think this tragedy (about ancient Greek tragedies!) and set in ancient Syracuse won my heart.
A great year! Thanks for hosting @Andrew65

This one is me, not the book. I tend not to enjoy fiction set in Ancient Greece and this was no different. Glad I gave it a try at least. Don‘t let me deter anyone. #TOBlonglist

I loved this, it was brilliant, but then maybe it is something only another Classicist would love? I have beef with the blurb calling it a comedy, it is def a tragedy, if a madcap one, and it is about POWs being forced to perform in order to eat, so rather brutal for even dark comedy. But there were still some flashes of beauty, and I appreciate the decisions the author made in plot and execution. #tob25 #tob25longlist

I didn't mean to sound like I hadn't found new things to read in the #tob2025 longlist! Above the line are books that have been on and off my monthly tbr stacks all year and which I'll now try harder to fit in, and below the line are books newly on my radar 🥰 I can't believe I missed the newest Rivers Solomon!

Love this. Bumblers into heroes arc, beautiful prose, beautifully paced. Set in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War, but laced with Irish jargon and a stripped-down setting of quarries & markets for a sense of timelessness near the “wine-dark” sea. Brutality & art. Preservation of culture. Entertaining the enemy. Funny & sentimental. Crazy premise (stage Medea with actors now prisoners of war) becomes a beautiful mediation on art & freedom. 2024

#bookhaul 😁

It's won awards & everyone is raving about it - so it was fairly obvious I wouldn't rate it! (Seriously, why IS it always me?!) The Irish voice is irritating, a gratuitous gimmick for the sake of novelty, a cheap "unique selling point". Lampo is initially such an unpleasant character it's hard to warm to him during his redemption. I found the writing stodgy & the pace draggy. It wasn't as witty as it thought it was. It gets better at the end.

This was a good balance of funny and horrific, the narrator Lampo both a tragic hero and a bumbling fool. The tone was perhaps a bit too modern, Lampo sounded like an Irishman, but in a way it added to the sense of theatre. (Who knows what a potter in ancient Syracuse sounded like anyway?) And fortunately it is not (post-post-post?) modern in its ending. On the contrary, the final sentence makes you nod in agreement, fully satisfied with the story