WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE STREGA EUROPEAN PRIZE A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE AN AMAZON TOP 10 BOOK OF DECEMBER 2023 A Book of the Year for 2023 according to the Guardian, FT, Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Sunday Independent, Economist, Big Issue, Daily Telegraph, Irish Times and Waterstones 'A CRUCIAL BOOK FOR OUR CURRENT TIMES... BRILLIANTLY HAUNTING.' OBSERVER The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism 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. 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 a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together. 'A compassionate, propulsive and timely novel that forces the reader to imagine — what if this was me?' FT

First things first, Prophet Song is a shockingly fast read. That is a bizarre thing to say about a book about an awful civil war in Ireland, but it's true; every member of NUBClub reported moving quickly through it. Prophet Song follows Eilish, a mother and wife of a teachers' union activist as Ireland slides into fascism and war. The world falls apart around Eilish as her husband is disappeared by authorities and a conflict slowly boils between the increasingly authoritarian state and an armed resistance. Along the way, Eilish does not leave for a shifting set of reasons until she finally becomes a refugee with her remaining family. Lynch's message here is very clear -- he's recasting the story of refugees into a familiar European setting and exploring how they end up in horrible conditions of migration. None of us could argue that Lynch failed to deliver that story. The prose is powerful and driving, and Lynch creates a very real descent into chaos. Having read a lot of novels where the authors want to end the world, the global steps we see in Prophet Song as the government disrupts protests, people disappear or are suddenly dead, and quiets come before violent storms all felt very believable to us. And the conclusion of the novel is amazing, full stop. It's just a stunning piece of writing that could have won this book the Man Booker alone. So why isn't it Loved by All? The issue is that while the global worldbuilding is terrific, Eilish herself is not as considered. Aside from her reflections on the immediate harms to her family, there's actually not much to Eilish at all. She has a job in a lab, but that effectively only exists so she can lose it -- she never thinks as a scientist or a bureaucrat or goes into her history there. Despite the fact that her husband is an organizer, she seems to have no network of friends or political fellows to confide in or lean on. Everything in Eilish's world seems to set up just to focus her on her suffering, and it doesn't make sense given the set-up we have for Eilish's family or for reality of communities in areas such as this in the world. Lynch does show the character complexity in other places -- Eilish's children have more complicated and rich relationships to their changing worlds and in a refugee camp Lynch depicts the kinds of ad-hoc communities you would expect under oppression such as this, but that just makes the absence of it in Eilish's story more striking. There aren't even real foils for Eilish's point-of-view -- there are characters who react to the civil crisis differently (including her eldest son), but there's no one who can help us validate or question Eilish's perception. We don't think this is a mistake on Lynch's part; we think it's a conscious choice to keep his protagonist in this particular position so that he could create a perspective that would push the story to the conclusion he wanted. It's deft and powerful, but it feels manipulative and we couldn't help but argue that if there were more complexity to Eilish we would have found her journey more compelling. This book was a hard one for NUBClub. Lynch is a great writer and succeeded at what he was attempting to do. That's a major accomplishment. And seriously, the ending is pure poetry worth reading. But we can't wholeheartedly recommend Prophet Song. It's just too overtly manipulative to drive you to its theme. It's very good, but be suspicious if you decide to get on this dark ride.