Irish writer Paul Lynch’s fifth novel ‘Prophet Song’, on the Booker Prize shortlist, tells the story of the desolation and trauma when a democracy morphs into a totalitarian state
Paul Lynch, who is on the shortlist for the 2023 Booker Prize for his fifth novel Prophet Song (Penguin Random House India/Oneworld), sometimes jokes with his writer friends that somewhere in the Midlands, there’s a factory that’s producing more and more Irish writers every year. Lynch is among the three Pauls who figure on the shortlist, the other two being Paul Murray (The Bee Sting) — another Irish writer — and Paul Harding (This Other Eden). The Irish writers are rapidly assimilating the current events in the world, allowing a variety of influences to seep in. Their natural command of the language grants them the freedom to explore uncharted territories in English, boldly venturing where many other writers might hesitate.
Prophet Song is centred on the struggles of Eilish Stack, a microbiologist and a mother of four, amid Ireland’s descent into totalitarianism. One evening, Eilish finds herself confronted by two men at her doorstep, seeking information about her husband, who happens to be a leader of teachers’ union, facing accusations of sedition. These men represent a newly established clandestine law-enforcement agency in Ireland, aligned with the radical political party that is rapidly transforming the government and the familiar way of life she has known, as a result of which she’s emotionally blunted. Briefly, a group known as the National Alliance Party has come to power in Ireland, and under the pretext of combatting the “ongoing crisis facing the state,” it has issued the Emergency Powers Act.
A journey into an abyss
About a week later, the party replaced the regular Secret Detective Unit with the Garda National Services Board (GNSB), who are in control of the “maintenance of public order.” Regulations and laws that are becoming more and more oppressive cause people to lose their sense of freedom and disappearance of the ones considered to be potential rebels. Eilish has to reconcile with the bleak reasoning of her now disintegrating nation. What and who is she ready to leave behind, and how far will she go to defend her nation? Lynch tells the story of the desolation and trauma that results when a democracy morphs into a totalitarian state.
Carole Sexton, another woman whose husband doesn’t return home one day, finds herself dreaming each night of “a soundless sleep but that is impossible now, it took me some time before I understood that I was already asleep in a manner, you know, that I was sleeping all the time I thought I was awake, trying to see into the problem that stood before me like a great darkness, this silence consuming every moment of my life, I thought I’d go mad looking into it but then I awoke and began to see what they were doing to us, the brilliance of the act, they take something from you and replace it with silence and you’re confronted by that silence every waking moment and cannot live, you cease to be yourself and become a thing before this silence, a thing waiting for the silence to end, a thing on your knees begging and whispering to it all night and day, a thing waiting for what was taken to be returned and only then can you resume your life, but the silence doesn’t end, you see, they leave open the possibility that what you want will be returned some day and so you remain reduced, paralysed, dull as an old knife, and the silence does not end because the silence is the source of their power, that is its secret meaning.”
As a writer, Lynch’s characters truly inhabit the present moment, amidst the backdrop of an enormous silence grabbing hold of the ‘is’ of the thing, echoing Clarice Lispector. He uses long blobs of text, with no paragraph breaks, which serve as a wall in order to create a disoriented experience. There are absence of speech markers and yet one is never ever confused as to who is speaking. For Lynch, the beauty of prose is a means of enticement, a seduction to summon the reader into an abyss; the dense text creates an overwhelming feeling.
Subversion of the dystopian
Subverting the conventional dystopian narrative, Lynch employs the present tense, which reflects the unfolding moment. This approach exhibits a willingness to adapt and flex, ultimately jeopardising the authenticity of reality. Drawing inspiration from John Keats, the novel carries a distinct sense of ‘Negative Capability’ (defined by the poet as ‘being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’), inviting readers into the realm of the unknown and a sense of the sublime which is quietly terrifying. The events of the book aren’t mere bricks that make up a story, they are in fact happening in the world in the here and now. It’s nothing fantastical.
What lends the novel a sense of shock is its setting in Ireland, where it seems impossible to be happening, as the author writes: “... the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report of on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore ...”
Lynch’s exceptional skill lies in crafting a dystopian pastiche that serves as a compilation of pivotal moments from the past century when communities turned against one another, and ordinary life transformed into a terrifying struggle for survival overnight. The novel resonates with echoes reminiscent of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, including a Kristallnacht-like event, accounts of mysterious ‘disappearances,’ and a chilling bureaucracy reminiscent of historical events in Chile. It also incorporates scenes that evoke the haunting memories of the Sarajevo Bridge, from Ireland’s own sectarian conflicts, and, of course, the contemporary migrant crisis.
Putting ‘humanity’ to the test
Prophet Song is also about the eternal reoccurrence — a philosophical concept revived by Friedrich Nietzsche, which states that life recurs in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity. Change is so incremental as it follows a universal trajectory towards an inevitable truth: “...it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire, the sun gone down into the earth at noon and the world cast in darkness…”
Escape becomes one of the motifs as characters continually seek to dodge troubles. Humanity faces a compromise, not just in its treatment of individuals, but also in the way people perceive themselves. At a certain point, one of Eilish’s sons begins contemplating survival strategies, which include indulging in disturbing online content such as acts of terrorism. This consumption is similar to watching pornography, fulfilling an unsettling desire, much like scratching an itch. The media’s influence on us leads to desensitisation. Wars, since the Vietnam War, have been broadcasted for us to witness. We receive regular updates on ongoing events, but this often reduces individuals to mere numbers and statistics.
At the heart of this not-so-dystopian story lies a profound philosophical question, reminiscent of Dostoevsky: “How much of a human being is really a human being?” Towards the end, the concept of humanity is once again put to the test. Eilish is grappling with the daunting task of ensuring her family’s safety, which necessitates an arduous border-crossing. She finds herself compelled to offer bribes and pay off individuals owing to pervasive corruption, leaving her with little hope and no one she can rely on. This bleak reality becomes evident in her interactions with her daughter as they cross the border, particularly when an officer separates them. Eilish thus tries to find small acts of resistance as she cuts her teenage daughter’s hair to make her less attractive and diminish her sexual appeal.
Perhaps the only flimsy aspect in the book is a character trying to tell the whole thrust of the book, which feels unnecessary, given the profundity of the narrative. Lynch’s work is a clarion call, a mirror reflecting our capacity for cruelty and resilience, challenging us to contemplate the boundaries of humanity.
