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Book review: James Hynes’ Sparrow is a slave boy’s tale that verges on trauma porn
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American novelist James Hynes' Sparrow follows a young slave boy's coming-of-age during the times of the Roman empire.
PHOTOS: PAN MACMILLAN, MIMI MAYER
Sparrow
By James Hynes
Historical fiction/Picador/Paperback/464 pages/$31.23/Books Kinokuniya
3 stars
Set in Carthago Nova during the Roman empire’s dying days, young Sparrow – “son of no one, father of no one, beloved of no one, a slave, a whore, a cinaedus, a eunuch, a murderer” – tries to make sense of his brutish existence.
