SPARROW

Raised in a brothel on the Spanish coast in the waning years of the Roman Empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble.

His world is a kitchen, the herb-scented garden, then the loud and dangerous tavern, and finally the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ – prostitutes of every ethnic background from the far reaches of the empire – do their mysterious business. When not being told stories by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world.

Through meticulous research and bold imagination, Hynes brings the entirety of the Roman city of Carthago Nova – its markets, temples, taverns of the lowly and mansions of the rich – to vivid life. Sparrow recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity, and introduces readers to one of the most powerfully affecting and memorable characters of recent fiction.

ISBN: 9781529092400
Imprint: Picador
Publication Date: 4 May 2023
Dimensions: 154mm x 232mm
Weight: 580g
No. Of Pages: 464