Prophet Song

Prophet Song

by Paul Lynch

****WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023**

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, an exhilarating, propulsive, and confrontational portrait of a society on the brink from an internationally award-winning author.

How far will you go to save your family? And what or who would you be willing to leave behind?

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Irelands newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what or who is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mothers fight to hold her family together.

Praise -----------------------------------------------------------------

Daily Mail review "Tense conceived on a far bigger scale While much of the books sinister power lies in how Lynch hints at the steps by which democracy gives way to totalitarianism, its real energy comes from how he portrays the continuing everyday pressure of Eilishs obligations to her children and frail father amid the deepening turmoil [a] provocative thought experiment."

Sunday Times "A prophet in tune with our difficult times and quote from Aoife: Lynch renders this almost-Ireland in fluid, poetic prose, moulding sentences as if they were made of plasticine. Its no surprise that since his debut he has been compared with the American writer Cormac McCarthy."

Irish Times interview "His description of a totalitarian Ireland feels chillingly plausible."

Sunday Independent (Dublin) review "Lynchs writing bristles with tension While Lynchs novel is a laudable addition to a genre that serves as a warning about how easy it is to lose the freedoms we take for granted, perhaps its greatest achievement is that at no point do the events depicted feel too improbable to be realistic Prophet Song is entirely original and might well find its Booker journey continuing further yet."

**i review by Max Liu "Melodious absorbing. There are strong meditations on what home means in a world in perpetual crisis and how we disassociate ourselves from other peoples catastrophes."

**The Big Issue, Best Summer Books "A modern greathis profound investigations of place, identity, religion and memory consistently compared to names as awesome as Dostoevsky, Heaney, Nabokov and Emily Dickinson.In his typically lyrical, lulling style, Lynch pulls off a masterstroke here, setting his futuristic story, of a nation made fearful and suspicious by their tyrannical governments surveillance, in the most familiar of settings, his home country. The chill, so close to home, is blood curdling."