Irish novelist Paul Lynch wins the prestigious Booker Prize 2023

The Irish author, Paul Lynch, was awarded the prestige prize literary British Booker Prize 2023 for his dystopian novel “The Song of the Prophet” during a ceremony Sunday night in London.

The novelist, who was selected for the first time, was rewarded for his fifth novel, a dark and harrowing account of the life of a family mother in an Ireland that falls into tyranny.

“This book was not easy to write. “Part of me thought I was going to put my career in danger by writing it, but I had to see it through to the end,” declared Paul Lynch after his victory, acknowledging his “immense pleasure in bringing the Booker to Ireland.”.

The Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, which rewards works of fiction in English, contributed to the success of writers such as Salman Rushide, Margaret Atwood and Arundhati Roy.

All of the writers selected in this edition — two Americans, one Canadian, two Irish and one Kenyan — were part of the final selection for the first time.

The winner gets a reward of 50,000 pounds (about 57,000 euros, about $62,000) and the assurance of international success.

Paul Lynch wrote in part “The Song of the Prophet” novel with a claustrophobic atmosphere, with blocks of text that occupy entire pages, during the confinements of the covid-19 pandemic.

The writer, born in Limerick in 1977, and who lives in Dublin, has four other novels.

In total, 158 books published in the United Kingdom or Ireland between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023 were delivered to the Booker Prize foundation, and 13 of them had been selected in a first round.

Last year, Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, 47, won the Booker Prize for his novel “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.”