The 2023 Booker prize has been awarded to Paul Lynch, an Irish author, for his fifth novel, Prophet Song. The book, which portrays an imagined Ireland that is descending into tyranny, has been described by the judging chair, Esi Edugyan, as a “soul-shattering and true” novel that “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment”.
The Canadian novelist Edugyan, who has been shortlisted twice for the Booker prize herself, revealed that the decision to award Lynch the £50,000 prize was not unanimous. The final decision was taken after several rounds of discussions and voting that lasted for about six hours.
Prophet Song takes place in an alternate Dublin. Members of the newly formed secret police, established by a government turning towards totalitarianism, turn up on the doorstep of microbiologist Eilish asking for her husband, a senior official in the Teachers’ Union of Ireland. Soon, he disappears – along with hundreds of other civilians – and Eilish is left to look after their four children and her elderly father, fighting to hold the family together amid civil war.
