Paul Lynch on Prophet Song, literature and violence

In Paul Lynch’s award-winning novel Prophet Song, Ireland has turned into a tyrannical state. One night, Eilish Stack, a mother and a scientist, answers the door to find the secret police looking for her husband. It is the start of a nightmarish attempt to keep her family together in a society that gets more violent by the minute.

Throughout his novel, the horrors of today’s world are revoked. As Paul Lynch says: ‘fiction has a way to work around the guards of a reader’. One can close off from the news, but not from a good book. Tonight, we will discuss violence, empathy, and the ways in which literature can articulate them.