Paul Lynch바카라s Prophet Song, which won the Booker Prize 2023, has been routinely called Orwellian or Atwoodesque and is even compared to the film Apocalypse Now. This brings out the insistence of publishing houses and critics to box authors into tight pigeonholes. Although allegedly dystopian, Prophet Song does much more than just speculate about an incumbent future. When asked about the inventive form of the novel, Lynch, in fact, disclaims the category. Lynch in conversation with Pranavi Sharma.
How do you bridge the gap between reality and unreality? Do you think dystopia, if you want to call it that, as a form was indispensable to make sense of the political reality around you?
I don바카라t think the book fits in the category of dystopia because a fiction where the events in the book are happening somewhere else in the world right now, ceases to be speculative. So, I think the dystopian handle is useful for publishers because it seems to be ridiculous, almost, that you would have this kind of an event in Ireland. There was an Irish journalist who wrote in The Guardian shortly after the book came out: 바카라Well, events like this would never happen here because, in Ireland, we don바카라t have a far right바카라. Then a couple of weeks later, we saw that we had a far right. Then the same journalist wrote again about how we have a far right, and now we have to worry about leaders. I find that very amusing.
Apart from seducing the reader through form, to what extent do you think Irish English has carved its own vacancy? How do you make use of language in the book?
Well, if you think about the power of Irish literature on the world stage, one thing that바카라s fundamental to that power is that we were colonised by the British, but we colonised the language. So, a lot of the English spoken in Ireland is Hiberno-English. It바카라s English that takes on the forms and borrows grammatical structures in the Irish language, which is an inversion and you get an English that바카라s more lyrical, more musical, more energised.
For instance?
Let me quote you a beautiful example of local vernacular in Dublin that always makes me laugh. I heard this on the street one day and I바카라ve always remembered it. There was a lady speaking to a man and she said: 바카라Were you lashing the sunbeds out of it?바카라 In other words, we바카라re using the sunbeds too much. Sunbeds means that the guy was very tanned. There바카라s so much going on in that sentence that nobody바카라s going to understand that, and that바카라s really Dublin, that바카라s really Irish. So, Irish writers have always had the licence to play with that language, to push it, to bend it, to break it, if necessary. I바카라ve always taken liberties with the English language and I find that Irish writers have that licence to bend the language to our will to make it our own.
What do you think is your responsibility as a writer? Do you think of fiction as something that holds a mirror to society or does it hammer it down?
I don바카라t think that a writer has any political responsibility. I think that fundamentally, the job of fiction is to articulate the strangeness and the complexities of life. If you read the great literature, you will discover that it바카라s full of wisdom. So, the true responsibility of the series writer is to mine for human truth, to search for human truth and explore what defines us throughout the ages. What is it that makes a human being? What바카라s the stuff that we are made from? If we can articulate that, then we will know who we are in the world.
바카라What I바카라ve noticed is that there바카라s a lot of anxiety in India about the future. The book seems to be communicating something to Indian readers, which is fascinating for me바카라
What makes Prophet Song a local event? Do you also see a semblance of what you have written in your book here in India?
What I바카라ve noticed is that there바카라s a lot of anxiety in India about the future. There바카라s a lot of fear about values changing for the worse. The book seems to be communicating something to Indian readers, which is fascinating for me because I바카라m just a writer from Dublin바카라I sit in a room, and I close the door, and I mix, I make stuff up. But this book seems to have the ability to communicate with people from all around the world. When I was in London, I met somebody from Ukraine. She said to me, 바카라your book, you told our story바카라. Then the next night, I met somebody from Palestine, and she said the very same thing. That seems amazing to me. You know, this is the thing about the power of fiction; that the closer you can get to myth, the more the weight that story can hold within it. Prophet Song does have a mythic quality to it. I don바카라t say when it is set; I don바카라t define it with a lot of detail to make it the now. There바카라s room within that book to be a little bit timeless. So I바카라m always interested in universal values. I바카라m interested in human truths. What does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to suffer? How do we define ourselves when we are met with profound difficulties? All my books are about this stuff. But somehow, there바카라s a political dimension to this book that seems to resonate. That바카라s not something you set out to do. That바카라s not something you make a choice to try and capture the zeitgeist. If you strain to capture the zeitgeist, the book will be a failure.
Prophet Song reminds me of the system of Gyres. A certain idealism also runs through it. You routinely talk of bearing influence from Keats바카라 negative capability, which is yet another idealism. Do you also try to induce hope through your writing?
I don바카라t think about hope. I don바카라t think that바카라s my job. I like the idea that inducing hope is something my characters do. Because it바카라s a default activity바카라we wake up, and we hope to presume that life바카라s going to be good today. When we바카라re met with difficulty, we hope that things will improve. But I think that negative capability is very useful for a writer because the truth is that life is blind. We don바카라t know anything, most of the time. We overestimate our intelligence, we overestimate our knowledge of events, and we completely underestimate complexity. We move through the labyrinth, all the time. Life is elaborate. I try to give form to that in my stories, to shape narratives that can actually convey the sense of the labyrinth, the sense that we are blind, and that the world is truly unknown, unknown to us. And, you know, it goes back to the Greeks. In many ways, Eilish is almost Greek in that she바카라s constantly making decisions to try and outmanoeuvre the fates. But what바카라s taking place around her is far beyond her powers and comprehension, and this is something that I바카라m always interested in. That sense of human agency within the vast and different world. The fact that we as human beings are always trying to find our lives, we바카라re trying to find meaning for who we are. But the world around us is silent, it is indifferent, and it doesn바카라t give a damn. And how do you reconcile these two things? The modern world is defined by individuality. And yet, every so often, all of us will have an encounter with reality.
Pranavi Sharma is a Delhi-based art and culture writer
(This appeared in the print as 'The Events In The Book Are Happening Somewhere In The World Right Now')
