ICYMI, Irish author Paul Lynch has bagged the 2023 Booker Prize for his dystopian novel Prophet Song.
Lynch’s fifth novel is a dystopian political novel set in Ireland and imagines the country descending into fascism under a totalitarian government following a civil war. Canadian author and jury member Esi Edugyan called the novel a “soul-shattering” work and others termed it as a “triumph of emotional storytelling”.
Established in 1969 by a British food wholesaler, the awards have come a long way from only recognising writers from Commonwealth countries, Ireland, South Africa or Zimbabwe until it was opened to all English-language writers in 2014. Previously, Indian authors including VS Naipaul (In a Free State), Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children), Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things), Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss), and Arvind Adiga (The White Tiger) have won the prestigious prize. In 2022, author Geetanjali Shree’s The Tomb Of Sands became the first Hindi novel to win the International Man Booker Prize.
If you’ve already read Prophet Song, and are looking for your next read, then take a pick from our selection of previous Booker Prize-winning novels that would suit every mood…
Booker Prize Winning Novels, Like Paul Lynch’s ‘Prophet Song’, That You Should Read
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