Ferdia Lennon: ‘I was tired of Merchant Ivory accents’

Ferdia Lennon, 36, was born and raised in Dublin. His first novel, Glorious Exploits , set in ancient Sicily, was the winner of this year’s Waterstones debut fiction prize. It follows two jobless potters who decide to co-direct a play performed by Athenian prisoners of war. The New York Times called it “a comic riff on Greek tragedy, with an Irish accent”; for Roddy Doyle, it’s a tale of “modern-day Dubliners living among ancient Greeks”. Lennon spoke from his home in Norwich.

Tell us where this novel began.
I’ve been fascinated by ancient Greece since I was a kid. Then I read History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, a chronicle of the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta, which spilled out across the Mediterranean world. Athens launched this unprovoked invasion of Sicily, primarily against Syracuse, the main power. They thought: “We’ll be done in a few months and it’ll help us win in Greece.” It ends up with thousands of Athenian prisoners being flung into a quarry outside the city of Syracuse. I knew I wanted to write about that, but didn’t yet know my angle. Then a couple of years later, I was reading Plutarch’s Life of Nicias , where he describes how some of those defeated Athenians survived by quoting lines from Euripides, the most popular dramatist amongst the Sicilians. I thought, OK, that’s my story: who were these Syracusans who left Athenian prisoners to die in this open-air pit, yet were so fascinated by their drama that they’re willing to save them in exchange for these precious lines?

What led you to centre the action on two unemployed friends?
Some of my favourite books and films are about friendship: Don Quixote , Withnail & I … Starving Athenians in a quarry in 412BCE is completely beyond the pale of what people are familiar with, but you can ground it in a friendship that people will understand. Most people have experienced that sense of their life not necessarily going quite the way that they’d hoped, some unrealised or unfulfilled ambitions.

James Joyce’s house was five minutes up the road: just seeing that plaque, there’s something nice about having that literary history celebrated around you

Why did you write it in a Dublin voice?
Why not? I’m not going to write in an ancient Greek or fifth-century BC Syracusan dialect. There’s always a decision about which version of English to use. At first I was thinking: this is coming out quite Irish, do I pull back or double down? For me, it made sense to double down. I was tired of ancient Greek or Roman characters sounding as if they’ve stepped out of a Merchant Ivory production. Sicily had been colonised by mainland Greece: it made sense to me that the Greek they speak would be a bit different, the way Hiberno-English is a bit different. And Syracuse is the biggest city in Sicily, so the Dublin voice made sense. The Greek world wasn’t a monoculture: you’ve got different dialects, different classes, immigration, a massive slave trade. The language was a way to try to capture some of that difference.

Have you ever been involved in theatre?
No, my only performance has been as Frankenstein in a London Dungeon knock-off – I lasted about a couple of hours! I lived in Paris for a while and had friends who ran an amateur theatre group. I’d watch their rehearsals but never actually acted myself. I love cinema, though. As a kid my older brother was really into films, so we just had exposure to things you wouldn’t normally see at a young age: Kubrick, Kurosawa, Sergio Leone , who I love. Watching spaghetti westerns helped me indirectly with this book.

How did you first get interested in history?
I think I just liked good stories. Early on at school we had this textbook called Footprints and the interesting thing was that the early sections were versions of Irish myths and then as it went on it became straight-up history. It didn’t differentiate between them: like, chapter one was about Cú Chulainn , who’s one of the key Irish mythic heroes, then chapter 10 was about Kennedy! But maybe at some level that made a link between myth and narrative and history.

How do you explain the current wave of successful Irish novelists?
I remember that when I was a student, James Joyce’s house was five minutes up the road: just seeing that plaque, there’s something nice about having that literary history celebrated around you. On a practical level, the structures in Ireland make it easier for writers. An Arts Council grant helped me write this book. I wasn’t in any way established, but you could submit a work in progress to a panel of your peers and if you’re lucky, you might get money that will give you a couple of months that could be the break. I feel part of the burgeoning moment in Irish literature has to do with the financial crash. A whole generation was devastated, in Ireland maybe more than most. There were no jobs, so you felt freer to do what you wanted, even if it made no money; I started writing in Granada [in Spain] while unemployed.

Related: Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon review – uproarious am-dram in ancient Sicily

Tell us what you’ve been reading lately.
I’m rereading T he Snow Was Dirty by Georges Simenon . It’s one of his romans durs – this guy commits a murder to impress one of his friends around the second world war, the time of the German occupation. In a reading slump, I’ll pick up a Maigret; Simenon’s amazing at lucidly getting a scene down and creating an atmosphere.

What are you writing now?
A novel set in 14th-century France during the hundred years war, in the aftermath of the Black Death. I’ve described it as a bit like True Detective in the middle ages, grounded in research but done in a way that’s maybe a bit off-kilter. But in the middle ages, because of the belief systems, who knows what people saw when they left their house? It’s like a portion of the population are on LSD the whole time.

• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon is published by Fig Tree (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply