Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song which won the Booker Prize for fiction on Sunday evening, has discussed how the authoritarian themes in the novel emerged from the burst of language which forms the book’s first page.
In an interview on Auraist, an online platform which selects the best-written books from major prize shortlists and reviews, Lynch spoke about the power of language and how it can shape a reader’s understanding of a story. “Literary style should be a way of knowing how the world is met in its unfolding,” he said. “And so I shape my sentences around the truth of the unfolding — in other words, my realism is memetic and presses its way into feeling, atmosphere, emotion, etc. Vocabulary, syntax etc., like mobilised troops, follow this initial command.”
As Lynch continued to write the book, the prose style he employed began to work in tandem with the narrative, creating an appallingly believable authoritarian Ireland for the protagonist Eilish. He described the use of long sentences and lack of paragraph breaks as “locking the reader into the same claustrophobic space that Eilish inhabits”.
In his Booker Prize acceptance speech, Lynch said, “Literary style should be a way of knowing how the world is met in its unfolding.” Read the exclusive interview with him at Auraist to gain further insight into his approach to writing.
Derick is an experienced reporter having held multiple senior roles for large publishers across Europe. Specialist subjects include small business and financial emerging markets.