Official website of author

about paul lynch
Paul Lynch is the Booker Prize-winning author of five internationally acclaimed novels: Prophet Song, Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow, and Red Sky in Morning. Widely celebrated for his lyrical style and emotional intensity, Lynch’s work explores universal themes of the human condition, often drawing comparisons to literary greats such as William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett.
His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize and the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It has been described as “a prophetic masterpiece” by The Washington Post and “soul-shattering” by the Booker Prize jury. The novel has also been shortlisted for several major international awards, including the Dublin Literary Award, Italy’s Strega European Prize, and the Kirkus Prize in the United States.
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Lynch’s earlier novels have earned similar acclaim. Beyond the Sea (2019) was called “mesmerising” by The Wall Street Journal and won France’s 2022 Prix Gens de Mers. Grace (2017) won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. The Black Snow (2014) received France’s Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel and was hailed as “masterful” by The Sunday Times. His debut, Red Sky in Morning (2013), was a finalist for France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger and earned praise from NPR as the work of “a lapidary young master.”
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Born in Limerick in 1977 and raised in County Donegal, Lynch now lives in Dublin. In 2024, he was appointed Distinguished Writing Fellow at Maynooth University and elected to Aosdána, the Irish affiliation of artists who have made exceptional contributions to the creative arts. His novels have been translated into over 40 languages.
Prizes & nominations
2025: Dublin Literary Award: Shortlisted
2024: Dayton Literary Peace Prize: Winner
2024: Kirkus Prize: Shortlisted
2024: Strega European Prize: Shortlisted
2023: Booker Prize: Winner
2023: An Post Irish Novel of the Year: Shortlisted
2022: Prix Gens de Mers: Winner
2020: Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors’ Literary Award: Winner
2019: Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature: Shortlisted
2019: Prix Littérature Monde: Shortlisted
2019: Grand Prix de L’Héroïne: Shortlisted
2018: Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year: Winner
2018: The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction: Shortlisted
2018: The William Saroyan Prize for International Writing: Shortlisted
2016: Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel: Winner
2016: Prix des Lecteurs Privat: Winner
2016: Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors’ Literary Award: Shortlisted
2015: Prix Femina: Longlisted
2015: Prix du Roman Fnac: Longlisted
2014: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize): Shortlisted
2014: Prix du Premier Roman (First Novel Prize): Longlisted
2013: Bord Gais Irish Books of the Year: Shortlisted
The novel from Paul Lynch:
PROPHET SONG
• WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
• SHORTLISTED FOR STREGA EUROPEAN PRIZE,
THE KIRKUS PRIZE, THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE AND THE AN POST IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR
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A book of the year in:
The FT • The Guardian • Irish Independent
Irish Examiner • Daily Mirror
Daily Express • The Telegraph
Waterstones • The Economist • The Tablet • Globe & Mail
and Tertulia Best Book of the Year and A New York Times Editors’ Choice
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A fearless portrait of a society on the brink and a mother’s battle to save her family
Oneworld: UK, Ireland, Commonwealth
Grove Atlantic: North America
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"Paul Lynch’s harrowing and dystopian Prophet Song vividly renders a mother’s determination to protect her family as Ireland’s liberal democracy slides inexorably and terrifyingly into totalitarianism. Readers will find it timely and unforgettable. It’s a remarkable accomplishment for a novelist to capture the social and political anxieties of our moment so compellingly.“
— Booker Prize Jury
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"If there was ever a crucial book for our current times, it’s Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song...a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere."
— Observer
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"The Irish offspring of The Handmaid’s Tale and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Paul Lynch’s Booker-longlisted fifth novel is as nightmarish a story as you’ll come across: powerful, claustrophobic and horribly real. From its opening pages it exerts a grim kind of grip; even when approached cautiously and read in short bursts it somehow lingers, its world leaking out from its pages like black ink into clear water… Where Prophet Song leads us in its closing pages is shocking, yet grimly inevitable. We would do well not to look away."
— Guardian
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"A prophetic masterpiece"
— The Washington Post
"A gripping, brilliantly realised story of political violence [inviting] comparisons with the work of Margaret Atwood and George Orwell… The local can be anywhere; other people’s nightmares can be yours. This is a masterly novel that reminds us that democracy is always fragile, and that it is fragile now."
— Literary Review
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"Thunderously powerful… beautifully measured and solemn prose... Lynch asks us to face some of our darkest fears, and if he offers no comfort, and little hope, then we must surely recognize his true purpose: that the furious reader should return to the real world determined to find a better ending for this story."
— Times Literary Supplement
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"This horrifying yet lovely novel would be a masterpiece even in a time of halcyon equality and justice for all. But that time is not this time."
— NPR
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"Lynch's writing bristles with tension... It's greatest achievement is that at no point do the events depicted feel too improbable to be realistic… In a time when so many novels feel like carbon copies of books we've read before, Prophet Song is entirely original."
— Sunday Independent
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"Eilish is a wonderful creation… Lynch does an excellent job of showing just how swiftly – and plausibly – a society like ours could collapse. Certain sequences read like a thriller – readers will find themselves literally holding their breath – while others are rendered in beautiful, lyrical prose."
— Irish Independent
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"A book of encroaching terror… Lynch's language is darkly lyrical, rich."
— Sunday Telegraph
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“Many, many lines and passages of great beauty and power."
— New York Times Book Review
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"A chilling fable… Paul Lynch is who we need now to tell us about our contradictory world… Lynch renders this almost-Ireland in fluid, poetic prose, moulding sentences as if they were made of plasticine. It's no surprise that since his debut he has been compared with the American writer Cormac McCarthy."
— Sunday Times (Ireland)
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“Prophet Song is a literary tour de force of mesmerising dexterity, a book that comes right at you with all the pace of a thriller… Tense. Terrifying. Heartbreaking”.
— Ros Dee, Sunday Independent
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"The fifth novel from one of the most acclaimed Irish writers of his generation… it’s being touted as 'Ireland’s 1984'."
— Telegraph
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"I don’t know when I last read a book that left me as shaken and disturbed as Paul Lynch's fifth novel. It is a tremendous achievement… Paul Lynch is a fearless writer - unafraid of taking on large themes and tackling them face to face... Prophet Song is an extraordinary achievement, totally realistic, demonstrating the power of fiction to enhance our empathy for those elsewhere."
— Irish Examiner
"Longlisted for the Bookerprize, and deservedly so, this is one of the most harrowing, minatory and provocative novels I have read in a while. It has the sharp cut of reality despite being set in an alternative version of our world, except for when it is all too recognisable. The final and penultimate chapters are truly shuddersome... The Irish context is important — I thought of it more as a kind of metaphysical novel. At what point do you flee? How do humans cope when faced with the unbearable, the inconceivable? Is the idea of common humanity an ethical fiction? So many books today do not take such questions seriously and reduce real politics to party politics."
— Scotland on Sunday
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"While much of the book’s sinister power lies in how Lynch hints at the steps by which democracy gives way to totalitarianism, its real energy comes from how he portrays the continuing everyday pressure of Eilish’s obligations to her children and frail father amid the deepening turmoil."
— Daily Mail
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“An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to [Eilish’s] fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) . . . Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A disquieting novel from an exceptional writer.”
— Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“Irish writer Lynch (Beyond the Sea, 2020) conveys the creeping horror of a fascist catastrophe in a gorgeous and relentless stream of consciousness illuminating the terrible vulnerability of our loved ones, our daily lives, and social coherence. Eilish muses over the fragility of the body, its rhythms and flows, diseases and defenses. The body politic is just as assailable. Lynch’s hypnotic and crushing novel tracks the malignant decimation of an open society, a bleak and tragic process we enact and suffer from over and over again.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Lynch’s dystopian novel is at once so particularly Irish yet so universally familiar that it deserves the overused modifier ‘Kafkaesque.’”
—Los Angeles Times
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"As Eilish's world begins to disintegrate around her, under the pressure of competing ideology and suspicion, the tension ratchets up almost unbearably. Lynch builds us a new world, and then pulls it apart with immense skill."
— ABC News, Australia
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"Paul Lynch constructs a lyrical, devastating exploration of the political, social, and emotional fallout of an authoritarian takeover. Reminiscent of the poetry of Seamus Heaney and the prose of Cormac McCarthy, Lynch’s writing sustains a unique, enchanting narrative voice. Laced with confusion, corruption, and conflict, Prophet Song is a dystopian lament that exquisitely uses the iconic imagery of Ireland, along the lines of James Joyce, to create an atmospherically overwhelming novel, warning of the potential woes of a modern-day fascist purge."
— Readings, Australia
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“A chilling study of Ireland becoming a fascist state… Lynch is brilliant at capturing people’s disbelief and denial throughout the slow slide into totalitarianism. An urgent, important read."
— Justine Jordan, the Guardian (Booker round-up)
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“With this stunning novel Paul Lynch has joined the ranks of Atwood, Orwell and Burgess.”
— Christine Dwyer Hickey, author of The Narrow Land
“Surely one of the most important novels of this decade”
— Ron Rash, author of Serena
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“I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years. The particular genius of this novel is that it makes the impossible possible... Prophet Song becomes a testament to a world unravelling. The comparisons are inevitable — Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy — but this novel will stand entirely on its own...“
— Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon
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“A monumental novel, prose so flawless and flowing that reading it is akin to being taken up in a wave. You emerge dazed. You remember why fiction matters. It's hard to recall a more powerful novel in recent years.“
— Samantha Harvey, author of The Western Wind
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“The work of a master novelist, Prophet Song is a stunning, midnight vision.”
— Rob Doyle, author of Threshold
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“Part cautionary tale; part dystopian nightmare; part fever dream.
Prophet Song takes you to the edge of the chasm and insists that you
look down. A masterclass in terror and dread.“
— Alan McMonagle, author of Ithaca
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“Gripping, chilling and terribly prescient — a novel with a darkly important message about this particular moment in time.“
— Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither
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“A mesmerising, shattering novel, Prophet Song lives and breathes on the page and lingers long after finishing it. A paean to maternal love amidst gathering forces of darkness, Paul Lynch has done something extraordinary. It is a work of wonder.“
— Lisa Harding, author of Bright Burning Things
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“Paul Lynch is a writer of great vision and power and Prophet Song is his best book yet.“
— Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie
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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.
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Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. 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 societal collapse and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
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contact
Paul Lynch representation:
Literary Agent — Simon Trewin, London.
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For all enquiries relating to PUBLICATION RIGHTS, or IRELAND & UK SPEAKING INVITATIONS,
please contact the Simon Trewin Agency: email
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For all enquiries relating to NORTH AMERICAN and INTERNATIONAL SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, please contact Trinity Ray at the Tuesday Agency: email
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For all enquiries relating to FILM or THEATRICAL RIGHTS, please contact Emily Hayward-Whitlock at the Artists Partnership: email
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For all enquiries relating to PUBLICITY, MEDIA ENQUIRIES and INTERVIEW REQUESTS, please email a publicist in the relevant country below: