In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Paul Lynch Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Paul Lynch

Paul Lynch

Paul Lynch Biography

Paul Lynch is the author of the novels Red Sky in Morning, The Black Snow, Grace, and Beyond the Sea. Grace won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2018 and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing 2018. The Black Snow won France's Prix Libr'à Nous for Best Foreign Novel and was a finalist for the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize). He lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.

Paul Lynch's website

This bio was last updated on 12/05/2023. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Paul Lynch discusses his Booker Prize-winning novel, Prophet Song and why he thinks the end of the world is always a local event.

The Irish novelist Paul Lynch has written five novels, among them The Black Snow and Beyond the Sea, that are widely admired for their poetic prose and thematic complexity. His latest, Prophet Song (Atlantic Monthly Press, $26), won the 2023 Booker Prize; it is an all-too-credible fable about democratic Ireland's descent into a police state, and its effect on a biologist, her trade unionist husband, and their children. Lynch spoke with Shelf Awareness about Prophet Song (reviewed in this issue)--the style of the novel, the 18th-century idea of the Sublime and its influence on this work, and the different understandings of the term "Socialist" in Europe and the U.S.

You address it in detail late in the novel, but, without giving anything away, can you discuss your choice of title?

I know from speaking with readers that the book's title may give the initial impression of omen. And of course, the novel can be read that way. But its deeper meaning is revealed much later in the book when Eilish, having ended what she must endure, is met with the realisation that the apocalypse, as proclaimed by the biblical prophets, is not in fact some sudden event, and that it is vanity to think that the world will just end in your lifetime. The ending...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Paul Lynch at BookBrowse
Prophet Song jacket Grace jacket The Black Snow jacket Red Sky in Morning jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Paul Lynch but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Rumaan Alam

    Rumaan Alam

    Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and adapted into a major motion picture, as well as two other novels. His writing has ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Prophet Song

    Try:
    Leave the World Behind
    by Rumaan Alam

  • Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood

    is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. She has won the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Prophet Song

    Try:
    The Testaments
    by Margaret Atwood

We recommend 30 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The House of Doors
    by Tan Twan Eng
    Every July, I take on the overly ambitious goal of reading all of the novels chosen as longlist ...
  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Information is the currency of democracy

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.