Prophet Song
P R A I S E F O R
P R O P H E T S O N G
‘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: if it
can happen in the most impossible place, it can happen everywhere.
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, not only as a beautifully written warning of how the
human heart can get twisted, but also as a tribute to the power of love in the
face of terrible reality.’
C O L U M M C C A N N , A U T H O R O F A P E I R O G O N
‘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.’
S A M A N T H A H A R V E Y , A U T H O R O F T H E W E S T E R N W I N D
‘A profoundly human story… Deft, subtle and written in strikingly
beautiful prose, with this stunning novel Paul Lynch has joined the ranks of
Atwood, Orwell and Burgess.’
C H R I S T I N E D W Y E R H I C K E Y , A U T H O R O F T H E N A R R O W L A N D
‘The work of a master novelist, Prophet Song is a stunning, midnight vision
whose themes are at once ancient and all too timely: fear, complicity,
resistance, and what becomes of us when hell rises to our homeland.’
R O B D O Y L E , A U T H O R O F T H R E S H O L D
‘Paul Lynch is a superb stylist and his sentences spark with an energy
equaled by the intensity of the narrative itself… To call his novel
“dystopian” feels too safe. Prophet Song reveals how close we in seemingly
stable countries are to the precipice. Surely one of the most important
novels of this decade.’
R O N R A S H , A U T H O R O F S E R E N A
‘Part cautionary tale; part dystopian nightmare; part fever dream. This is at
once fearless and affecting prose with a ticking clock inevitability and a
clanging bell pay-off. Both urgent jolt and slow furnace, Prophet Song takes
you to the edge of the chasm and insists that you look down. A masterclass
in terror and dread.’
A L A N M C M O N A G L E , A U T H O R O F I T H A C A
‘Gripping and chilling and terribly prescient – a novel with a darkly
important message about this particular moment in time.’
S A R A B A U M E , A U T H O R O F S P I L L S I M M E R F A L T E R W I T H E R
‘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.’
L I S A H A R D I N G , A U T H O R O F B R I G H T B U R N I N G T H I N G S
‘A modern great… Dublin’s Paul Lynch has been a lynchpin of the
Republic’s internationally celebrated output for over ten years, his profound
investigations of place, identity, religion and memory consistently
compared to names as awesome as Dostoevsky, Heaney, Nabokov and
Emily Dickinson. In his typically lyrical, lulling style, Lynch pulls off a
masterstroke here, setting his futuristic story, of a nation made fearful and
suspicious by their tyrannical government’s surveillance, in the most
familiar of settings, his home country. The chill, so close to home, is blood
curdling.’
T H E B I G I S S U E , ‘ B E S T S U M M E R B O O K S ’
‘Paul Lynch is a writer of great vision and power and Prophet Song is his
best novel yet.’
L A I R D H U N T , A U T H O R O F Z O R R I E
