BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 2023 - "PROPHET SONG" BY PAUL LYNCH
The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author.
Paul
Lynch is an Irish novelist known for his poetic, lyrical style and
exploration of complex themes. He has published five novels and has won
several awards, including the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. He
received the 2023 Booker Prize for his fifth novel, Prophet Song.
An exceptionally gifted writer, Paul Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to (Eilish's) fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life.
Lynch stated that one of the main inspirations for the book was the Syrian Civil War, the ensuing refugee crisis, and the West's indifference to the plight of refugees. Lynch has also cited the German author Hermann Hesse's work as an inspiration to write his first dystopian novel.
Prophet Song is a 2023 dystopian novel by Irish author Paul Lynch, published by Oneworld. The novel depicts
the struggles of the Stack family, including Eilish Stack, a mother of
four who is trying to save her family as the Republic of Ireland slips
into totalitarianism. The narrative is told unconventionally, with no paragraph breaks.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country.
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Synopsis -
In the near-future Republic of Ireland, in the wake of a teachers' union strike, the right-wing National Alliance party seizes control of the government. The National Alliance gives the Irish national police (the Garda Síochána) and the judiciary far-reaching powers. The regime also established a new secret police force, the GNSB (Garda National Services Bureau). The new government quickly repeals civil liberties; peaceful protests are broken up, and Irish citizens are arrested without cause and tortured.
Larry Stack, a teacher and trade union leader, is arrested and held without charge while attending a rally. His wife, Eilish, who is a scientist, is left to care for their four children and her father, who has dementia. Eilish petitions for her husband's release. The state soon descends into civil war, and Irish citizens who are suspected of being part of the resistance are arrested or killed. Eilish struggles to keep her family together during the civil war; she contemplates fleeing the country with her family, possibly joining her sister Áine in Canada.
Ukraine ... Israel-Gaza conflict ... Prophet Song anticipates this.
The morning after the Booker Prize 2023 event in London, Irish writer Paul Lynch, who won the prestigious 50,000 pounds literary honor for his dystopian novel Prophet Song, was still in shock. "I don't quite believe it," Lynch told the press.
"I feel as though I have entered into a counterfactual narrative that parallels my usual life. I probably should be in the kitchen at home, making a cup of coffee or something like that. And this is the sliding door thing that I am actually riding. At any moment now, I will be returned to my normal life. I will have to get in the car and do some shopping and collect kids from school, that kind of thing."
In his acceptance speech, Lynch quoted the apocryphal gospels: "If you use what is within you, it will save you. If you do not use what is within you, it will destroy you. My writing has saved me."
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of societal collapse and a deeply human portrait of a mother's fight to hold her family together.
In his typically lyrical, lulling style, Lynch pulls off a master stroke here, setting his futuristic story, of a nation made fearful and suspicious by their tyrannical government's surveillance, in the most familiar of settings, his home country. The chill, so close to home, is blood-curdling.
Other Books by the author :
Red Sky in Morning
Grace
The Black Snow
Beyond the Sea
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