Prophet Song

When I finished this year’s Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song, I felt that I hadn’t simply read it—I had lived it. The story follows Eilish Stack, a middle-aged working mother who’s trying to maintain the life she knew while a newly-elected Fascist regime cracks down, an insurgency intensifies, and civil war brings Ireland to collapse. Although billed as political dystopia, similar situations have happened before—are happening now—all over the world. Lynch said that he wanted to create a work of “radical empathy” and as Eilish moves through stages of disorientation, anxiety, terror, and grief, his poetic style evokes the physicality of her emotions, compelling you to share them and join her journey. Warning: this book demands an intrepid reader. The trip is harrowing but rewards you with keen insight into humanity and history and maybe even the resolve to help make it never have to happen again.