There are suspiciously timely prizes, although the reason they are awarded is more due to a background deluge than a happy coincidence. The book Prophet Song by Irishman Paul Lynch won this Sunday the prestigious British Booker Literary Prize, which is awarded to the best novel in the English language. It is a dystopian story that places Ireland under the totalitarianism of the extreme right and addresses the needs of refugees. It won the UK’s top prize, three days after the Irish capital suffered the most violent outbreak of street violence in almost two decades, with anti-immigrant ultra groups setting vehicles on fire, looting shops and confronting police.
“It is a literary prize for the most successful work. The main idea [para su concesión] is: Is this book successful from an artistic point of view? We cannot allow events in the world to determine which book deserves to win,” said Esi Edugyan, the Canadian writer and president of the jury. “Still, we wanted to choose a title that reflected what we are currently fighting. “The six finalist books speak to our times but are at the same time timeless,” he added.
Paul Lynch, author of four other novels, was born in Limerick, Ireland and currently lives in Dublin. Last year he revealed in an interview with The Irish Times that he was suffering from cancer, from which he appears to have already recovered after months of treatment. Her third work, Grace, won the 2018 Kerry Group Award for Best Irish Novel. His second work, The Black Snow, won the French booksellers’ prize Prix Libr’à Nous for the best foreign language novel.
The author himself explained on the Booker Prize website why his novel is set in an Ireland under the yoke of extremist totalitarianism: “I tried to see something in the midst of modern chaos. The existing unrest in western democracies. The problem of Syria – the implosion of an entire nation, the extent of its refugee crisis and the indifference of the West. Prophet Song is, in part, an attempt at radical empathy. To understand things better, we need to experience the problem ourselves. “I wanted to take a dystopian approach to achieve a high level of realism,” Lynch explained.
The novel’s protagonist, Eilish Stack, is immersed in the nightmare of chaos and collapse of the society in which she lives, while her husband, a union leader, is captured by the country’s secret services. In the story of one woman’s desire to maintain her family’s unity and stability, Ireland has become a country on the brink of political tyranny.
“The penalties have been exhausted to the limit. Lynch elicits linguistic masterpieces that are astonishing. He has the heart of a poet and uses repetition and a series of recurring motifs to create an unforgettable reading experience. “It is a triumph of emotional, powerful and courageous storytelling,” said the jury of the winning novel.
The Booker Prize, worth 50,000 pounds (around 57,000 euros), went to Irish authors five times. Most recently, she won the Anna Burns Award in 2018 for the novel “Milkman,” set during the harshest years of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland.
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