Sparrow

Utterly engrossing, vivid, and honest, this coming of age story reaches across millennia to grab us by the throat.'Emma Donoghue

An unnerving, exhilarating, unflinching portrayal of sex, slavery and sisterhood, takes the reader to one the most pitiless backstreets of the Roman Empire in its final years only to discover there - between the violence and the suffering, amid the Decline and the Fall - enduring tenderness and love. This is a novel of ancient times for our times. And it is splendid, a work of scorching distinction.Jim Crace