Prophet Song

By: Paul Lynch

Narrated by: Gerry O'Brien

Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Booker Prize 2023

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother of four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

©2023 Paul Lynch (P)2023 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

'I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years ... The comparisons are inevitable – Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy – but this novel will stand entirely on its own.' (Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon)

'Monumental ... You remember why fiction matters. It's hard to recall a more powerful novel in recent years.' (Samantha Harvey, author of The Western Wind)

'Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.' (The Guardian)

Painfully powerful Tale.

A friend who recommended it called it intense. The Audible summary called it propulsive. Both right and both words fall short.

Written as if a single sentence this novel carries you along as on a violent red wave as the heroine struggles to survive in an Ireland gone mad and The Troubles rip the covers off her simple, peaceful life and toss her and her Family into a whirlpool of Totalitarian Control.

Reading it at this time of Fear that it can happen here in America magnifies the impact of her story, but Lynch’s storytelling skill has created a timeless horror tale.

Four Stars. ****

Well worth it

Phenomenal portrait of what this must be like - What to believe? Are you naive? Are you over reacting? In a real crisis sometimes every action seems as overreaction until it’s over when those same actions are found to have been inadequate. Powerful story

Incredible in every way

Must listen. Let it affect you as it is meant to. Can we even be considered living without courage?

Could not stop listening

Scary and brilliant and beautifully written. I hesitated to listen to it, because I had heard that it was quite dark. Don’t let that stop you, it’s awesome.

Authentic & Gripping Cautionary Tale

A compelling and wrenching story of events that occur in a civilized first nation, when an authoritarian coup succeeds in overthrowing a democratic state. There was never a moment in this novel when I thought, “oh, that wouldn’t happen.” Indeed, the events and character choices were never sensationalized for literary effect, but instead seemed utterly authentic. Anyone who pays attention to our current state of the world, should put this novel on their list.

The creeping overtaking of ordinary lives by disaster.

Set in Ireland, yet shorn of Irish tropes, thus universal.
Powerful evocation of how stubborn optimism exposes us to the risk of denial.

Wow! Heartbreaking and Incredible story

Everyone should read or listen to this book. Dystopian story but totally plausible in our crazy world.

Timely. Timeless.

Lynch takes us inside that frog in a frying pan feeling that every person who has ever been ground under by displacement, occupation and war.

Timely

Took me to the darkness that I pray we never reach in this country. An important read for those who believe it can’t happen.

How adeptly the reader handled the author’s style of writing to convey so perfectly this amazing novel.

Loved every inch of this most amazing novel. It’s an utter masterpiece and I could not stop reading/listening.