Sparrow
Somewhere in Britannia, in the dying days of the Roman Empire, an equally decaying man recalls his youth. He names himself Jacob, but it is only one of many names, because the name of a slave, like everything else, belongs to his master.
In his earliest memory in Carthagena Nova (Cartagena, Spain), he has no name. Cowering in the shadows of a kitchen, as an angry woman wields a knife, he answers to the name Pusus: boy. It’s all anyone can tell him. He was bought with no name, his parentage unknown. Jacob takes time to describe his memories. The cluttered kitchen, its doorway ever open to a garden scented with herbs and the latrine. The tavern, also opening onto the garden, where noisy, frightening men drink, sing, argue and fight. And upstairs, ‘wolves’ – enslaved prostitutes – labour in their cells. One of them, Euterpe, emerges into the garden to tell the boy stories. The kitchen, tavern and garden are the boundaries of the boy’s whole life. On the day he is sent into the street to fetch water, he is terrified. But he gets his first job working as a water carrier. As Jacob explores further, the city is revealed in dazzling colours, rank smells, and swarming crowds. A city of violence and luxury: of power and repression. Of emerging Christianity, and casual murder.
Like the lives of the slaves, this book is filled with pain. Jacob’s story explores what it is to be a slave: the property of another. A slave has nothing. He feels nothing: he can have no friends. Even his own body is not his own: not even the most intimate, private parts. Except that, as a living, breathing human, Jacob shows us what made Rome wealthy. This book is powerfully told and deeply felt, but not for prudish readers.
