Lynch, Paul
Entry updated 27 November 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1977- ) Irish editor, journalist and author, most of whose fiction has dealt in nonfantastic terms with Irish history, focusing on issues – national identity; famine; enforced emigration – central to that history over the past two centuries. The influence of Cormac McCarthy is pervasive, as confirmed by an epigraph from The Crossing (1994) in Lynch's first novel of sf interest, the Near Future Prophet Song (2023), set in a Dystopian surveillance-state version of Ireland obsessed by issues of security, either in an Alternate History arena or the very Near Future: the two registers are fruitfully intermixed. The protagonist's immural (see Crime and Punishment; Prisons) into the carceral nightmare of this tyranny, while something like World War Three seems about to begin outdoors, is very starkly conveyed. Prophet Song was awarded the Booker Prize for 2023, signalling a welcome admission of Fantastika to an establishment habitat. [JC]
Paul Lynch
born Limerick, Ireland: 9 May 1977
works (highly selected)
- Prophet Song (London: Oneworld Publications, 2023) [hb/]
links
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