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In Prophet Song, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Paul Lynch writes of an Ireland of the near future, where the National Alliance Power has taken over. For Eilish Stack, who's just returned to her work as a scientist after maternity leave, it is a living nightmare. Her husband Larry, head of the teachers' union, sets out to lead a strike and does not come home. Each week, their second-oldest, Molly, places a white ribbon on the tree in their backyard. Oldest son Mark will be drafted after his upcoming 17th birthday. Eilish's youngest is still nursing; and third child Bailey is rageful that their mother is not doing more to get their father back.
Lynch's lyrical writing runs lines of dialogue together to emulate the feeling of the ground shifting. As a colleague whispers to Eilish: "if you change ownership of the institutions then you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief, what is agreed upon, that is what they are doing."