On a dark Dublin evening, the mother of Paul Lynch’s 2023 Booker Prize-winning novel Prophet Song opens her door to Ireland’s newly formed secret police wanting to speak with her husband. What follows is both a terrifying tale of an ordinary woman seeking to protect her family at all costs, and an exhilarating and confrontational portrait of a country sliding towards totalitarianism, described by The Guardian as “the Irish offspring of The Handmaid’s Tale and Nineteen Eighty-Four”.

His fifth novel in a lauded writing career that includes Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year winner Grace, Red Sky in Morning and France’s Prix Libr’à Nous Best Foreign Novel for The Black Snow, Paul joins Kim Hill to discuss his writing and his life-changing year as the winner of the world’s leading fiction prize.

Supported by Culture Ireland.