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PAUL LYNCH HAS gone from being a film critic at Irish newspapers to a full-time novelist and now a Booker Prize-winning author.
The writer, who lives in Dublin, was honoured for his fifth novel, Prophet Song.
Born in Limerick in 1977, Lynch said he sees himself similar to other authors from Ireland as “global writers, rather than just Irish domestic audience writers”.
He has written for the Sunday Times about cinema as well as being the chief film critic of the Sunday Tribune from 2007 to 2011 before the Irish newspaper closed.
His first novel Red Sky In Morning was listed as a book of the year in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and the Sunday Business Post as well as getting nods for French literary prizes such as Prix du Premier Roman and Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger.
The 2013 book is set in the bog lands of Donegal, an county that Lynch grew up in, and deals with a dark tale of oppression, a theme recurrent in his novels.
Lynch returned again to Donegal with the setting of The Black Snow, which deals with the death of an agriculture worker in 1945 and as his website states the subsequent “deepest certainties” this throws up about humankind.
He would go on to publish Grace in 2017, which saw him win the Kerry Group Irish novel of the year award, previously given to Booker Prize alumni Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle and John Banville.
‘This was not an easy book to write.’
— The Booker Prizes (@TheBookerPrizes) November 26, 2023
Watch @paullynchwriter's #BookerPrize2023 acceptance speech.https://t.co/o890YuwYOV pic.twitter.com/AgQ65hPGhg
Set during the Irish famine, the novel – which was also shortlisted for the Walter Scott prize – is about a young girl dressed in boy’s clothes who makes a journey accompanied by her brother across the country.
Lynch would follow this up with 2019’s Beyond The Sea, which focuses on South American fishermen that have to deal with a terrible storm that sees them adrift and grappling with a “fallen world”.
His last novel Prophet Song, published in August, is a tale of a tyrannical government and has been widely praised by critics.
Scientist Eilish Stack, a mother-of-four, has her husband taken away by the newly formed Irish secret police and the novel description says she is “forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together”.
The Observer said it is “a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere”.
The Times said the book’s purpose is for “the furious reader” to become “determined to find a better ending for this story”.
He previously told an interview with the Booker Prize that he began writing the novel shortly after his son Elliot had been born and finished it four years later.
Lynch opened up to the PA news agency in September about a kidney cancer diagnosis.
A year before he was put on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, Lynch said he was on an “operating table” which has made him think less about the future – that could bring TV and film productions of his work from Booker success.
“I’ve just reached a place where I’m just happy with what comes along and thankful for everything and I have my health now and I hope that it lasts,” he said.
He said he has been “declared” cancer free, and is having a preventive immunotherapy treatment.
Lynch also said he was writing a new novel but had to put on pause due to the buzz surrounding him being on the Booker shortlist.
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Come out you smarmy “man” and debate me if you can,
Show your wife how you fund your pensions off our misery,
Tell her how the IMF rendered both your earholes deaf
And how you went down as a failure in our history
Conn so true Enda will go down badly in history along with the thugs in FG and cowards in labour .
Conn i can see a great career for you in literature with that great poem its brilliant!
Haha… cheers Gus… it’s modelled off a Wolfe Tones song called “The Black and Tans”… i just made a few adjustments is all
Great poetry conn. I am singing it as I type.
Great – we can sing it on the 10th….
Okay. We get it. Something’s happening on the tenth.
or the 12th…
Whatevs. If you want to publicise it in every thread, do the decent thing and buy some advertising space.
Publicise the song or the 14th?
The 10th is in the public’s interest.
10-12-14
Careful Phil – Enda,Lorraine,Joan and Co will class this as musical terrorism.
True, those ISIS fellahs play a mean triangle!
Martin thats sinister fringe music…..
If you play it backwards you can hear satan himself. The devils music is what it is.
Brilliant
It’s to late to weep and wail,
because you voted Fine Gael,
so pay up or without fail,
they stick you all in jail
for stealing water
Enda, Enda, what have you done, you’ve made a mess, since you begun
Didn’t think it possible, to f#ck up in so many ways, we laugh now, as we look back, at your magic 100 days.
There’s no goin back, you’ve made your bed, you’ve tried to f#ck us over, your only hope, at this stage now, is a lucky 4 leaf clover
But that can’t work, we want you out, all you’ve done is falter, the final straw, it came along, when you charged us for our water!!
Get out
Paddy Mac!
I am surprised that we have not yet had a statement from the government about this….accusing he of being part of ‘a sinister group’, etc. Fact is that the Nasty Party need to wake up to the fact that the people don’t want IMF, ECB and vulture capitalists etc running this country through a proxy (poxy) government.
Well done Phil. Passionate as ever. Luke would have been proud of you stance.
Enda Kenny you crook
You’ve run out of luck
And the people of Ireland
Dont want you
You’ve made them all poor
With that auld German hoor
Pretending that she really
Likes you.
Feel free to add a new verse..
And let’s not forget Joan the moan
“How dare these people have a new phone”
I sure her taxpayer funded one is a brick
You condescending cow
You make us all sick!
Splish splash I can not take a bath, water charges are adding up, Enda and Joan would squeeze blood from a stone and pretend everything is alright…….
Ahhhh Stop.
Maybe we should have bands on the marches – to help the singing.
I prefer the B Side:
‘Shove Your Water Charges Up Your Arse’
No Mark – some of us have already paid them. Bad credit ratings would have too serious consequences.
Wet Wet Wet are bringing it out on CD
Another one bites the dust /Queen, would be more appropriate.
She’s coming to the 2016 celebrations, Trevor…
The theme tune should be the funeral march.
Song should be we supply things to shove up the governments arse
Angela ,I wonder if one day that,you’ll say that,you care
If I say I love you madly,I’ll gladly,give you Éire
As, I’ll always be your ‘ puppet on a string’.
journal… how many articles on water can you out. please please come up with something else. G Brooks didn’t even get this many
“trot out”
There once was a man from nantucket…………eh….
Give me 20 minutes
To avoid fees he p!ssed in a bucket
Take 20 years, Fran….
Enough Enough
The water of d’arrière?????????????
Bring back Bertie Ahern – with Jarry Adams as Minister for the Disappeared….
Somebody is a bit obsessed with Mr Adams I think.
I love flushing 100 euro notes down the toilet. but before I do i always dangle it and take a pic first . DAFAQ
MU – you still got mental health issues?
In other news an IW employee dropped and wasted a box of paper clips today, stay tuned for thejournal updates on this breaking story… Followed at 9pm by our other IW stories, what Margret the HR manager ate for lunch (A Panini!…THE NOTIONS!), an unprofessional water meter installer photographed wearing a their vest inside out and the Irish water van caught endangering the lives of helpless children by recklessly driving 28kph in a 25kph school zone….
And now the end is near, enda fears the final curtain. My friends I hear your prayer. He’s gone of that I’m certain. But now. What will we do. The other partys are not able, so my friends I’ll say it clear, I’m no fine gaeler…..
There once was old man called Kenny,
Who stole everyone’s last penny,
He sat like a sap
And drank water from his tap,
With no water where will I put my last rennie
There’s little power in the shower as we there’s a bigger shower in power
i thought we already had a water protest anthem ON;LY OUR RIVERS RUN FREE
Harrumph for the governor
Cringe
have your say