Irish writer Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize for Song of the Prophet
Interface News Reporter | Dong Ziqi Intern reporter Li Yanhui
Interface News Editor | Yellow Moon
According to the official news of the Booker Prize, on the evening of November 26, local time in the United Kingdom, Irish writer Paul Lynch (Paul Lynch) won the 2023 Booker Literary Prize for "Prophet Song" (Prophet Song).
Song of the Prophet is Lynch's fifth work, and the story is set in the near future. On a dark, damp night in Dublin, Ireland, secret police formed by a new totalitarian government show up at the door of scientist Eilish Stack and take her husband away. Soon, Eilish's husband disappeared along with hundreds of civilians, leaving her to care for her four children and her elderly father. Ireland slipped into the abyss, and the whole country fell apart. Eilish can only watch helplessly as her familiar world vanishes, and she also finds herself trapped in a nightmarish cycle of a collapsing society—at the mercy of uncontrollable and unpredictable forces, and forced to do whatever it takes to maintain her family.
"Song of the Prophet" is set in dystopian Ireland, and it is in this way, according to Lynch, that he reflects on the current situation with twists and turns, including the Syrian civil war and the refugee crisis. He completed the novel in four years, "through the COVID and post-pandemic eras. At first, my son was just born, and by the time I finished writing, he was able to ride a bike. ”
Irish writer Paul Lynch (Image source: Paul Lynch's personal website)
At the time of writing the book, Mr. Lynch said he realized that he was partly discussing a question of modernity: Why are Westerners so unsympathetic to the influx of refugees at their borders? He chose to achieve a high degree of realism with a deeply dystopian approach. Lynch also hopes to deepen the reader's immersion in the reading: "After reading the book, they [the reader] will not only understand the problem, but also experience it," like a simulation of the real world.
Born in Limerick and raised in Donegal, Paul Lynch, 46, currently lives in Dublin. He was the chief film critic for Ireland's Sunday Forum and wrote a number of film reviews. In the field of literary creation, he has published five novels, including Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow and Red Sky in Morning, in addition to Song of the Prophet.
Paul Lynch's On the Sea Chinese translation
Translated by Liu Yongjun
Heaven and Earth Press, 2021
Lynch once mentioned in an interview that the writers who influenced him the most were Melville, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Faulkner and McCarthy. Because these writers are adept at depicting deeper realities with exaggerated realism, conveying the universal human condition, including anger, confusion, and greatness. Interestingly, the 2022 Booker Prize-winning writer Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the Booker Prize for his work The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war, depicts reality in a "ghost story" way.
Esi Edugyan, the chairman of the Jury for this year's Booker Prize, said the judges "didn't agree" on whether the Song of the Prophet would win the award, and that they made the decision after nearly six hours of discussion and multiple rounds of voting. Edugian described Song of the Prophet as a deserving winner, praising it as a "thrilling, true" novel that "captures the social and political anxieties of our moment."
Just days before Lynch's award, which imagines Ireland falling into tyranny, was awarded a knife attack outside an elementary school in Dublin, Ireland, injuring three children. Subsequently, violent protests erupted in the city center, chanting "anti-immigrant" slogans. Irish police said the "frenzied operation" was "driven by extreme right-wing ideology". Although "Song of the Prophet" may seem very "contemporary", Edugian said that "contemporaneity" is not the reason for the "Song of the Prophet" award, and that the judges who supported the book considered it a "true masterpiece" and that they wanted to find a "novel that could both reflect and transcend the present", saying: "In these turbulent times, we wanted to find a novel that was instructive — a book that reminded us not only to focus on ourselves, but also to focus on everything that deserves to be saved." ”
Sixteen years after Irish writer Anne Enright won the Booker Prize in 2007 for The Gathering, Lynch said at the ceremony that he was "excited to bring the Booker Prize back to Ireland." He is also the fifth Irish writer to receive the award, following Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright. In an interview, Lynch referred to the influence of the great Irish writers of the past: "Writers like Samuel Beckett and James Joyce not only created great works, they also delivered tremendous energy to culture. Whether we realize it or not, we are still absorbing these energies. ”
The Booker Prize is one of the most important literary awards in the English-speaking world, established in 1969. This year's Booker Prize covers novels published in the UK and Ireland between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023, and must be written in English regardless of the author's nationality. Each year, the winner of the Booker Prize will receive a prize of £50,000, and the other shortlisted authors will each receive a prize of £2,500.
The Booker Prize's international reputation and the surge in sales it has generated may be more attractive than the cash prize. In 2020, Scottish writer Douglas Stuwarter won the Booker Prize for his first novel, Shaki Bain, which sold 25,000 copies in the UK, a 19-fold increase a week after the award was announced.