Who is Paul Lynch, Irish writer who won 2023 Booker Prize? Know about his novel 'Prophet Song'
Paul Lynch received this year’s Booker Prize for his dystopian novel 'Prophet Song' at a glittering ceremony at Old Billingsgate on Sunday. This is his fifth novel which narrates the story of protagonist Eilish Stack, who struggles to protect her family in Ireland slowly tipping into totalitarianism. Receiving the award, Paul Lynch said, «This was not an easy book to write. The rational part of me believed I was dooming my career by writing this novel. Though I had to write the book anyway. We do not have a choice in such matters.»
Lynch thanks children
Lynch also thanked «all the children of this world who need our protection, yet have lived, and continue to live through the terrors depicted in this book».
Praising Lynch, the chair of this year’s judging panel novelist Esi Edugyan said he «flinched from nothing, depicting the reality of state violence and displacement, and offering no easy consolations.» Edugyan was twice shortlisted for the £50,000 prize. Talking about the prize, she said that the judges «felt unsettled from the start of Prophet Song, submerged in, and haunted by, the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch's powerfully constructed world.»
What is 'Prophet Song'?
'Prophet Song' takes the reader deeply inside the refugee experience and details Stack’s race to find safety outside of Ireland’s borders. It is an Ireland of such grinding oppression that taking to the waters might prove far less perilous than staying on dry land, but Edugyan was at pains to point out the judges were looking for a tome that encapsulated an air of «timelessness».
Paul Lynch is the fifth Irish writer to win the Booker Prize in its 54-year history. Earlier, writers from the country have been well represented on the longlists
