Prophet Song

‘Paul Lynch is peerless’ Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers

An Irish Times ‘Book to Look Forward to in 2023’

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author

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 Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

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.

“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