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The Satyricon
The Satyricon
Aug 16, 2025 7:49 AM

Author:Petronius,Helen Morales,J P Sullivan

The Satyricon

The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely written by an advisor of Nero, it recounts the adventures of Encolpius and his companions as they travel around Italy, encountering courtesans, priestesses, con men, brothel-keepers, pompous professors ­and, above all, Trimalchio, the nouveau riche millionaire whose debauched feasting and pretentious vulgarity make him one of the great comic characters in literature. Estimated to date from 63 - 65 AD, and only surviving in fragments, The Satyricon nevertheless offers an unmatched satirical portrait of the age of Nero, in all its excesses and chaos.

Reviews

Only a Briton could have written Bird Brain. Eccentric and anthropomorphic, you’ll either love or hate this book. I loved it. It’s high-spirited, subversive and full of wry social observation and excellent jokes. Think Paul Torday meets Chicken Run

—— Daily Mail

A bloody brilliant book

—— Spectator

I loved it... It's a book I've been waiting for all my adult life, for it feels to me like nothing so much as a rather adult version of that other great pheasant story, Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World

—— Rachel Cooke , Observer

A wonderfully astute satire with full confidence in its own eccentricity... Ripe, rich, fun, this is a beautifully turned story, good to the very last drop

—— Sunday Times

Tom Sharpe meets Watership Down in the hugely enjoyable story of Basil “Banger” Peyton-Crumbe, a man who, having exulted in the slaughter of game birds all his life, is killed in a shooting accident and reincarnated as a pheasant…. It would not be quite accurate to say the book anthropomorphizes animals because they all retain, quite brilliantly, their animal natures, but at the same time Banger, even as a dim bird begins to gain insight into his shortcomings as a human being.Funny, astute and completely absorbing

—— Guardian

Funny, poignant and original, this country-house whodunit made me laugh out loud, and nod in recognition at its acerbic observations

—— Country Life
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