Meet Irish Author Paul Lynch, Winner Of Booker Prize For 'Prophet Song'

Irish author Paul Lynch has been honoured with the prestigious Booker Prize, Fiction, for his impactful novel Prophet Song. The judges praised the book as a "soul-shattering" portrayal of a woman's struggle to safeguard her family in the backdrop of Ireland's descent into totalitarianism and war.

Set in a dystopian fictional version of Dublin, Lynch's work was awarded the £50,000 (Rs 52,58,000) literary prize during a ceremony in London on Sunday. Esi Edugyan, the Canadian writer, who chaired the panel, described the novel as "a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave." She commended Lynch for his remarkable use of language, stating he "pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness."

The competition included five other finalists from Ireland, the UK, the US, and Canada, selected from a pool of 163 novels submitted by publishers.

Here are five facts about the novelist:

Paul Lynch, born on May 9, 1977, hails from Limerick in the south-west of Ireland. He grew up in County Donegal and currently lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Before becoming a full-time novelist, he was the chief film critic for Ireland's Sunday Tribune newspaper from 2007 to 2011. He also wrote about cinema for The Sunday Times.

Paul Lynch's debut novel, Red Sky in Morning, was published in 2013. It received critical acclaim and was an Amazon Book of the Year. The same year, he was shortlisted for the Bord Gais Irish Books of the Year.

In 2018, he received the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and was shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and The William Saroyan Prize for International Writing. The following year, he was shortlisted for the Prix Jean Monnet, Prix Litterature Monde, and the Grand Prix de L'Heroine.

In 2020, Paul Lynch was honoured with the Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award.