Prophet Song

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 - NATIONAL BESTSELLER

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.

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

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.

"An exceptionally gifted writer….His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006)....Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement. " Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"A gorgeous and relentless stream of consciousness….Lynch's hypnotic and crushing novel tracks the malignant decimation of an open society, a bleak and tragic process we enact and suffer from over and over again." Booklist (Starred Review)

"A disquieting novel from an exceptional writer." Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

"I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years....The comparisons are inevitable - Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy — but this novel will stand entirely on its own." Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon

Paul Lynch is the award-winning author of five novels — Prophet Song, Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow and Red Sky in Morning. His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize and was shortlisted for the Strega European Award and the An Post Irish Novel of the Year. He has previously won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and France's Prix Libr'à Nous for Best Foreign Novel, among other prizes. He has been shortlisted for many international awards, including the UK's Walter Scott Prize, and France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, Prix Littérature-Monde, and the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. In 2024, he was appointed Distinguished Writing Fellow at Maynooth University and was elected to Aosdána, which honors artists who have made outstanding contributions to the creative arts in Ireland. He lives in Dublin.