Prophet Song | Paul Lynch

Eilish, mother of four, is waiting for a knock, it will come and it will be two plainclothesmen of the Garda, come to ask about her husband, he isn't in, she says, tell him to call us when he gets back, they hand her their card, I will, the situation slowly resolving itself, but an uneasiness will remain and it will haunt her and she pressures her husband to call back and to demonstrate his willingness to cooperate, but it will not be enough and Eilish and her family have marked themselves as enemies of a government all too eager to rule through violence.

Set against the backdrop of present-day Ireland, maybe one election away, this novel spells out the nightmare of modern fascism. It dares to go where it hurts, and in this act it is simultaneously terrifying and cathartic. Terrifying because it's fascism, the everyday disrupted by military violence, social cohesion aggressively fractured by shame and fear, the facelessness of the oppressive government. Cathartic because it does not pretend—it's not set in an imaginary country far away, it's not the past, not the future, it's here and now.

Still, it is an agonizing read. Long paragraphs, made up of long sentences, relentlessly drag the reader along, leaving little room to breathe. The events themselves, of course, are horrible to witness, exacerbated by everyone in this family of six pulling in different directions, disagreeing on whether to flee, to fight, to stay and wait it out—the children not realizing the gravity of the situation, the grandfather unable to live alone due to his dementia but unwilling to come live with his family, the mother unable to protect everyone, in her caring accidentally pushing people away.

Prophet Song deservedly won the Booker Prize in 2023. It is the book to read for those of us who are worried about our political landscape, those looking at the US in horror and then staring in disbelief at our media at home pretending that it's fine and normal, that Trump is just a quirky guy and our politicians have seen through him, have hacked our foreign relations by becoming sycophants to the dictator. Prophet Song isn't blinded like that. It stares unflinchingly at the horror.

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