Paul Lynch has won the 2023 Booker Prize for Prophet Song, a tale of tyranny in a reimagined version of his native Ireland.
Novelist Esi Edugyan, the judging chairman, described the book as “soul-shattering and true” and a work that “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment”.
Lynch has now taken the £50,000 prize ahead of five others on the shortlist. Those were: Paul Murray - The Bee Sting; Chetna Maroo - Western Lane; Paul Harding - This Other Eden; Jonathan Escoffery - If I Survive You; Sarah Bernstein - Study for Obedience.
Edugyan said the decision “wasn’t unanimous” and took “about six hours” to settle on Saturday before the prize was awarded on Sunday.
Lynch said: “It is with immense pleasure that I bring the Booker home to Ireland.
“I had a moment on holiday in Sicily many years ago where I had this flash of recognition, I knew that I needed to write, and that was the direction my life had to take. I made that decision that day to just swerve, and I swerved. And I’m bloody glad I did.”
Who is Paul Lynch?
The 46-year-old was born in Limerick and was a film critic for the Sunday Times about cinema as well as the chief film critic of the Sunday Tribune from 2007 to 2011 before the Irish newspaper closed.
This was before his first novel Red Sky in Morning was published to acclaim in 2013 after sparking a bidding war between publishers. The book is set in the bog lands of Donegal, a county that Lynch grew up in, and deals with a dark tale of oppression, a theme recurrent in his novels.
He has since published The Black Snow (2014), Grace (2017), and Beyond the Sea - which both came out in 2019. His works have focused on the human spirit during toil and hardship, being compared to greats such as Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner.
For Grace, he won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award, previously given to Booker Prize alumni Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle and John Banville.
His Booker prize win comes on the back of a kidney cancer diagnosis in September. He has now said he is cancer-free and is having a preventive immunotherapy treatment.
“I’ve just reached a place where I’m just happy with what comes along and thankful for everything and I have my health now and I hope that it lasts,” he said at the time.
What is Prophet Song about?
Lynch began his fifth novel shortly after his son Elliot had been born and finished it four years later.
Prophet Song depicts a dystopian Northern Ireland in the near future, centred around the protagonist Stack family. The unconventional structure has no paragraph breaks.
Lynch was presented with his trophy by last year’s winner Shehan Karunatilaka, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate, London. While he is well-regarded for his works, the Booker Prize might be his pathway to more mainstream success.
He added: “Well, there goes my hard-won anonymity. 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 won the prize at the same time riots broke out across Dublin, where he lives, over the weekend.
“Like everybody else, I was astonished by it,” he said.
“And at the same time, I recognise the truth that this kind of energy is always there under the surface and, I didn’t write this book to specifically say, ‘here’s a warning’, I wrote the book to articulate the message that the things that are in this book are occurring timelessly throughout the ages.”
