Ferdia Lennon has been announced as the recipient of the 2025 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He will be presented with the award at a ceremony in Trinity College Dublin this evening.
The €10,000 Rooney Prize, awarded annually since 1976, celebrates an outstanding body of work by an emerging Irish writer under 40 years of age. It is administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre for Creative Writing in the School of English, Trinity.
Lennon, who was born and raised in Dublin, holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. After several years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son. Glorious Exploits, his first novel, was published by Fig Tree in January 2024. Set in Sicily in 412BC during the Peloponnesian War, the novel focuses on two local potters and a group of captured Athenian soldiers staging one of Euripides’ greatest tragedies.
The darkly comic novel won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024 and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Comic Fiction Prize 2024, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and was adapted for BBC Radio 4.
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Lennon said: “These days, when I get a call from an unknown number, it is almost always someone trying to persuade me to switch internet provider. So when I received a call this summer and the caller turned out to be Jonathan Williams, patiently explaining that I had in fact won the Rooney Prize for Literature, I was at first incredulous and then simply overjoyed.
“As an Irish writer, I have been aware of the Rooney Prize for years, and though there was a part of me that secretly dreamed I might one day win, that my name might sit alongside that distinguished list of Rooney winners who have inspired me, actually winning was both a great surprise and a deep honour.
“The importance of literary prizes to writers cannot be overstated. They bring attention to our work and, in this instance, thanks to the generosity of Peter Rooney and the Rooney family, provide invaluable financial support too. In my case, as I move from Glorious Exploits’ war-torn ancient Greek Sicily to the more cheery subject of the Black Death in 14th-century France, winning the Rooney Prize will be of immense practical help, granting me that most wonderful gift of uninterrupted time to finish my second novel.”
The jury praised Glorious Exploits for its ingenuity and inventive use of a Dublin vernacular voice.
Chair of the prize committee, literary agent Jonathan Williams, said: “Ferdia Lennon’s debut novel, Glorious Exploits, is an ingenious and invigorating narrative of conflict, displacement and comradeship, set in Sicily in the fifth century B.C. during the Peloponnesian War. The story, inspired by Thucydides and Plutarch, is inventively told in a Dublin vernacular voice by one of the two central characters – out-of-work potters. The members of the Rooney Prize jury are confident that Glorious Exploits gives promise of more imaginative works of fiction from this very gifted writer.”
As well as Williams, the jury included Vincent Woods, playwright, poet and broadcaster; Martina Devlin, author and newspaper columnist; Carlo Gébler, novelist and Assistant Professor Creative Writing, Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, Trinity; Sinéad Mac Aodha, executive director of Literature Ireland; and Rita Sakr, Associate Professor of English Maynooth University.
Benefactor Dr Peter Rooney said: “Glorious Exploits is a witty and humorous reimagining of the Greek Epic. The novel both educates and entertains the reader, exploring notions of narrative structure, history and the art of storytelling itself. It juxtaposes the horrors of warfare with the interpersonal relationship of its two primary characters, demonstrating the importance of loyalty and friendship during dark times.
“Glorious Exploits is not only a timely read for the world we find ourselves in today, but it is also a vital read ... it is vital because it gives us hope, hope that there will always be light when you have love.”
The Rooney Prize is the longest-established literary prize in Ireland. It is distinctive in the Irish literary landscape for its recognition of emerging writers and its ability to reward originality and risk. Previous winners include Kate Cruise O’Brien (1979), Neil Jordan (1981), Frank McGuinness (1985), Anne Enright (1991), Colum McCann (1994), Mike McCormack (1996), Claire Keegan (2000), Kevin Barry (2007), Lucy Caldwell (2011), Doireann Ní Ghríofa (2016), Seán Hewitt (2022), Michael Magee (2023), and Suad Aldara (2024).
