'The Events in the Book are Happening Somewhere in the World Right Now'

Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, which won the Booker Prize 2023, has been routinely called Orwellian or Atwoodesque and is even compared to the film Apocalypse Now.

- Pranavi Sharma

This brings out the insistence of publishing houses and critics to box authors into tight pigeonholes. Although allegedly dystopian, Prophet Song does much more than just speculate about an incumbent future. When asked about the inventive form of the novel, Lynch, in fact, disclaims the category. Lynch in conversation with Pranavi Sharma.

How do you bridge the gap between reality and unreality? Do you think dystopia, if you want to call it that, as a form was indispensable to make sense of the political reality around you?

I don’t think the book fits in the category of dystopia because a fiction where the events in the book are happening somewhere else in the world right now, ceases to be speculative. So, I think the dystopian handle is useful for publishers because it seems to be ridiculous, almost, that you would have this kind of an event in Ireland. There was an Irish journalist who wrote in The Guardian shortly after the book came out: “Well, events like this would never happen here because, in Ireland, we don’t have a far right”. Then a couple of weeks later, we saw that we had a far right. Then the same journalist wrote again about how we have a far right, and now we have to worry about leaders. I find that very amusing.

Apart from seducing the reader through form, to what extent do you think Irish English has carved its own vacancy? How do you make use of language in the book?