Irish author Paul Lynch clinches 2023 Booker Prize

28 November 2023 - 09:39
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Paul Lynch's 'Prophet Song' has been awarded the 2023 Booker Prize.
Paul Lynch's 'Prophet Song' has been awarded the 2023 Booker Prize.
Image: Supplied

Acclaimed Irish author Paul Lynch has been awarded the 2023 Booker Prize for his fifth novel, Prophet Song.

First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize is regarded as the leading award for high-quality literary fiction written in English.

About Prophet Song:

The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism.

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 Ireland’s 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 when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

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 mother’s fight to hold her family together.

The Booker Prize 2023 judges on Prophet Song: “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.”

Article provided by Jonathan Ball Publishers 


subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now