Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is another weak winner as the Booker prize slides into irrelevance
The thing about Prophet Song, Paul Lynch’s unexpected winner of the Booker, is that it’s almost hilariously unprophetic. It starts with the Irish secret police knocking at the door, looking for a trades unionist, and goes on to a dystopian vision of a fascist state.
In fact, it turns out the actual Irish police were so scared by the rioters on the streets of Dublin on Friday that they left them to get on with it. And the only reason why the police might come knocking is when the new, authoritarian hate speech law comes into effect, whereby you’ll be banned from having any “hateful” material either on your computer or in book form in your home.
The problem isn’t just that the Booker judges are dumb; it’s that the publishing industry has lost touch with the reading public
Besides being wrong, it’s badly written. I can’t make head nor tail of the syntax: it’s written in peculiar present tense and the vocabulary is weirdly literary — the night air is “suspiring”; rain falls “almost unspoken”, as opposed to the chatty rain you find so often in Dublin.
And so the Booker Prize reaches yet another low, and it’s no excuse that the judges had to “revote and revote and revote” to get to Paul Lynch. The chair of the judges, Esi Edugyan, a Canadian novelist no one has ever heard of, told us that Prophet Song “forces us out of our complacency” about refugees. Well, news to Esi: it’s not the purpose of the prize, which is to reward literary merit.
But it’s a sign of the demoralisation of the Booker that we don’t much care. Time was when the Booker was one of the events of the year; we’d all have a view on the winner, read or not. Now the indifference of the public is reflected in record low sales for the shortlist. Can you blame us? There have been worthy winners: I was a fan of Hilary Mantel (while disliking her take on the history); Lincoln in the Bardo was much admired; and Shuggie Bain made a splash.
The problem isn’t just that the Booker judges are dumb; it’s that the publishing industry has lost touch with the reading public. It’s obsessed with political soundness in author or subject and unable to promote serious but readable literary fiction. I mean, would you pay to read Prophet Song? They’re putting us off contemporary books. The latest Booker Prize dud is the inevitable result.
Melanie McDonagh is an Evening Standard columnist
