Author(s): Paul Lynch

Fiction | Staff Picks

WINNER OF THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE. 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, Larry, a trade unionist for the Teachers' Union of Ireland. 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. Exhilarating, terrifying, propulsive and confrontational, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality and devastating insight, a novel that can be read as a parable of the present, the future and the past.

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Reviewed by Dan:

'The worm is turning' and the Irish state has silently fallen to an Autheritarian Nationalist regime. When Eilish Stack's husband is taken by the secret police for unionist activities, she becomes resolute to keep her family together and in un-interrupted normality. But as the country descends from violent bureaucracy to comb-fall, her task becomes more dangerous. This novel about innocent victims of state violence is a 1984 for our times.