Prophet Song

E-Book

Am 5. Dezember 2023 von Grove Atlantic veröffentlicht.

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

10 Auflagen

hat Prophet Song von Paul Lynch besprochen

Stressful read for all the right reasons

Thanks to the way it was written and the story combined, this book grabs you by the throat and infects you with the main character's stress that oozes out of the pages. Couldn't read this in one go, and the final 50 pages were a constant battle between reading on for the story and putting it aside because it was just so harrowing. One of those books that will ruin your day, if not your week, because it's just so good and awful at the same time.

hat Prophet Song von Paul Lynch besprochen

Will make you think and stay with you (stick with it if the prose and syntax feels awkward at first -- it's worth it)

First, I love the use of language, punctuation, syntax, in this book. It took time to acclimate, but once one does it becomes a character itself. I cannot imagine this story written in a more conventional way. At least not a story as powerful.

Second, I had no idea when I finished how much I would be thinking about it a month later. Do not get me wrong, I marinated on this book for a while after finishing (and while reading, of course), but recent events have made this story much more... pointed.

This was a difficult read and I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" it (apart from the language, which is beautiful at times, and cutting at others, and so so bleak). Do not go into Prophet Song expecting a rollicking read. It hurts, it frightens, it warns. This is all my opinion, of course, and I haven't …

blown away by this fever dream

Wow.

It took me a minute to sink into the third person present PoV and the lack of paragraphs and dialogue marks and the certain Irishness of the prose. And then ... suddenly … I found myself swept away by this fevered dream of a mother struggling to scrape out a bit of sanity in an insane and tragic world, mama-bearing her way through as best she can.

Wow.

You have never read a story like this and will never again. I highly, highly recommend this.

Wow.

Oh, by the way, this won the Booker Prize in 2023.

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