Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is the winner of the 2023 Booker Prize. This dystopian novel centres around Eilish Stack, the mother of four children, as the right-wing National Alliance party seizes control of the Republic of Ireland and exerts extreme restrictions, quickly leading to civil war.
Written in a flowing style without breaks between conversations, actions, ruminations, the reader is quickly drawn into the daily struggles (getting the kids to school, what's for dinner) and what's happening with the neighbours, their house has been dark? They say people taken in for questioning have not returned. Eilish is met at the door by the GNSB Secret Police who want to interrogate Larry, her husband who is head of the striking teacher's union. He is detained without charge. He will never return.
"Let me understand you correctly, he says, you're asking me to prove that my behaviour is not seditious? Yes, that is correct Mr. Stack. But how can I prove what I am doing is not seditious when I'm merely just doing my job as a trade unionist, exercising my right under the constitution? That is up to you, Mr. Stack, unless we decide this warrants further investigation, in which case it will no longer be up to you and we will decide".
Civil liberties are repealed, communications blacked out, peaceful protests are quelled by loading dissenters onto buses, passports negated, there are widespread food shortages. At seventeen, her oldest son is conscripted into National Defence, and anyone suspected of resistance is killed. The rule of law is merely a belief that can be altered. As the conflict approaches, her neighbourhood becomes a war zone with blockades, snipers and airstrikes, endless check points, endless bureaucracy, there is a chance her family can escape across the border, but strong roots and incredulity at how much damage has been done may hold her back until it is almost too late.
This is a harrowing read, absolutely an achievement to construct.
The style which at first lulls you into their lives, quickly entraps as the right-wing agenda damages everything in small doses - small slights you cannot oppose such as your friends who smugly supported the party in power. As a scientist, Eilish watches the National Alliance changes ownership of institutions, altering the structure of belief, what is agreed upon as a society. If you say one thing is another, and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep repeating it over and over, people accept it as true. Uncomfortably prescient.
The fighting is now on your doorstep, the house you tried to save is bombed out, and you are on foot, slowly losing your children. What drew the reader in is now claustrophobic as you are trapped with Eilish, with no option but to enter the violence, and literally run for your lives.
Paul Lynch says an inspiration for this was the Syrian Civil War, and like all wars somewhere over there, the West's indifference to the plight of the people. Eilish realizes that the end of the world is a local event, somewhere else there are people enjoying coffee at a sidewalk cafe, while she loses everything.
The Booker Prize stated it was a "triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave."
I found it haunting, and disturbing.
"In the dark times
will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.
Bertolt Brecht
2023 / Hardcover / 309 pages
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