Prophet Song by Paul Lynch has won the £50,000 (about $63,000) 2023 Booker Prize, making him the fifth Irish writer ever to win a Booker. Originally published by Oneworld, Prophet Song will be published in the U.S. by Atlantic Monthly Press on December 12.
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| Booker winner Paul Lynch. (photo: Booker Prizes) |
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Booker Prize organizers called Prophet Song "an exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a country--and an ordinary family--on the brink of catastrophe.
"On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her doorstep. Two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police want to speak with her husband....
"Things are falling apart. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny. And as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society--assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together."
Chair of judges Esi Edugyan said: "From that first knock at the door, Prophet Song forces us out of our complacency as we follow the terrifying plight of a woman seeking to protect her family in an Ireland descending into totalitarianism. We felt unsettled from the start, submerged in--and haunted by--the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch's powerfully constructed world. He flinches from nothing, depicting the reality of state violence and displacement and offering no easy consolations. Here the sentence is stretched to its limits--Lynch pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness. He has the heart of a poet, using repetition and recurring motifs to create a visceral reading experience. This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave. With great vividness, Prophet Song captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment. Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings."
Paul Lynch's five novels include Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow, and Red Sky in Morning. Grace won the 2018 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and the 2020 Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award. The Black Snow won France's bookseller prize, Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel. Lynch was the chief film critic of Ireland's Sunday Tribune newspaper from 2007 to 2011 and wrote regularly for the Sunday Times on cinema.