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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

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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...

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Books by this Author

Books by Paul Lynch at BookBrowse
Prophet Song jacket Grace jacket The Black Snow jacket Red Sky in Morning jacket
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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


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