Paul Lynch Wins Booker Prize for ‘Prophet Song’

The judges for the prestigious award were not unanimous in their decision to select this novel, which depicts an Ireland descending into totalitarianism.

When Paul Lynch, the Irish writer, started work on his fifth novel, he was thinking about the long civil war in Syria and the West’s apparent indifference to the people who fled the conflict.

So, he crafted a book that could bring that plight home.

That novel, “Prophet Song,” which imagines a near-future Ireland descending into totalitarianism, then a civil war that leads to families’ fleeing the country, has won the Booker Prize, the prestigious literary award.

This is a great book and story, important, dark and well written. Recommended.