Sparrow Novels

The Sparrow Novels follow an enslaved boy of unknown parentage as he learns to survive in the late Roman world. Sparrow begins within the kitchen, garden, tavern and upstairs rooms of a brothel in Carthago Nova, where the women called the wolves become his improvised family. Peacock continues his story after he enters Arcadia, the household of a new master, and discovers that secrets and performance can be as important to survival as obedience.

Across the sequence, James Hynes moves from the lives of enslaved people at the social margins to the rivalries of a wealthy Roman estate. The novels examine slavery, sexual exploitation, chosen family, identity, love and political manipulation while Christianity gains authority and the western empire begins to fragment. Sparrow’s changing names and carefully constructed selves give the series its continuity: each apparent escape places him inside a larger and more dangerous system of power.