Irish writer Paul Lynch wins Booker Prize with dystopian novel 'Prophet Song'

The Booker Prize is one of Britain's most prestigious awards for fiction and Paul Lynch will receive around €50,000 for winning.

Transcript

00:00 Irish author Paul Lynch has been awarded the prestigious 2023 Booker Prize for his novel

00:06 Prophet Song, a dystopian fiction about Ireland descending into tyranny. The 46-year-old wrote

00:13 the book during COVID-19 lockdowns and has described it as an attempt at radical empathy,

00:18 aimed at plunging readers into the experience of living in a collapsed society.

00:22 I specifically didn't articulate the politics because then the book would have been about the

00:28 politics and I wanted this book to be about the family. I wanted to take the Iliad and turn it

00:37 inside out and when you do that all the politics and all the heroics and everything that's

00:42 foregrounded disappears. What are you left with? You're left with Elishtag and her family.

00:46 Lynch is just the fifth Irish author to win the prize,

00:51 which has propelled to fame countless household names including Margaret Atwood.

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