Sparrow

By: James Hynes

Narrated by: Theo Solomon

In a brothel on the Spanish coast during the waning years of the Roman Empire, a young enslaved boy of unknown parentage is growing up. His world is a kitchen, then an herb-scented garden, followed by a loud and dangerous tavern, and, finally, the mysterious upstairs where the “wolves” do their business.

The wolves, named after the muses and coming from across the vast empire, are Sparrow’s surrogate family. They are his mothers and his sisters, his guides in a rough life, his solace from it. When he is not being told stories by his beloved 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. But 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, James Hynes brings the entirety of a Roman city to vivid life, recreating old Pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity, and introduces listeners to one of the most powerfully affecting and memorable characters of recent fiction. Sparrow is an enthralling, heartbreaking novel of identity, endurance, and love in a dangerous and changing time.

©2023 James Hynes (P)2023 Dreamscape Media

Sparrow

I liked the story and the narrators. There was a real kinship among the wolves. There is always one that you can’t please The story is a sad commentary on the human race how we judge people.

Top notch historical fiction

Absorbing, heartbreaking, unforgettable. Transports you to another time and place like few books can. Hynes is a major talent, as skilled at world building as telling a difficult story through the eyes of a damaged protagonist. This was a labor of love clearly, and goes on my list of rereads.

gritty and gripping

A fascinating, well paced novel set, unusually, in Cartagana, Spain, in the late 300s AD. A child raised in a whorehouse and the various, mostly awful, fates of the nearest thing he has to a family.

Extraordinary Storytelling.

Sparrow will take you on an emotional roller coaster ride. You will plunge into the depths and rise to the mountain tops. James Hynes tells a gripping tale for the ages.

Tragic and haunting

This is the story of human trafficking in the 4th century. It details the hopelessness of slavery, the capacity for human cruelty. It is not an easy book. however, the moments of human love that peek thru make for beauty. I mostly wept, sometimes laughed. one of my most affecting audio experiences.