With Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, the judges have chosen perhaps the most timely and urgent book on the shortlist – a novel explicitly plugged into global strife and political tectonic forces. But it’s also the very intimate, elemental story of one woman’s love for her family, and her desperate attempts to hold on to the immediate world around her in the face of rising chaos.
Lynch imagines an Ireland that has fallen under fascist control. Eilish Stack is a Dublin scientist and mother of four, busy with work, family and her elderly father, averting her eyes from the increasingly worrying news reports. Then grim reality comes knocking at her door: the newly created secret police arrive to interrogate her husband, Larry, about his work as a trade unionist. Along with many others, he is disappeared into the maw of the state. Their teenage children want to take to the streets – to wear the colours of protest, to march, to fight back – but all Eilish wants is to keep them hidden and safe. As civil war breaks out, and the streets of Dublin are filled with roadblocks and snipers, she remains frozen in a state of denial. Her sister, who lives in Canada, begs her over the phone to try to escape. “History is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave.”
