Booker Prize 2023 – the winner – who became the laureate

Advertising:

Paul Lynch. Photo: thebookerprizes.com

The author himself was convinced that the novel “Song of the Prophet” would end his career. Lynch said that he wrote it under the influence of the events in Syria, the problems of refugees and the actions of the West.

“I tried to look into the chaos of today. In unrest in Western democracies. In the problem of Syria – the collapse of an entire nation, the scale of the refugee crisis and the indifference of the West. “Song of the Prophet” – it is partly an attempt at radical empathy. To better understand, we must first experience this problem ourselves. So I sought to deepen the dystopia by adding a high degree of realism to it. I wanted to immerse my reader in the topic in such a way that at the end of the book he not only knew, but also felt this problem for himself“, the writer said.

Lynch said that he spent four years writing this book: “My son Eliot was born just before I started writing and by the end he was riding a bike“.

“I mostly write five days a week, several hundred carefully chosen words a day, often researching as I go, editing as I write…I spent six months writing the wrong book, and I knew it… Then one p On Sunday, around 3:00 p.m., I stopped writing and thought that this is not the right book – I will come back on Monday morning and start a new one. I felt something lurking, but I didn’t know what“, the writer recalled the beginning of work on “The Song of the Prophet”.

Advertising:

Photo: thebookerprizes.com

Esi Edugyan, head of the Jury of the Booker Prize 2023, noted that this year’s prize-winning book reflects today’s social and political anxieties.

“From the very first knock on the door, “The Song of the Prophet” forces us to get rid of complacency. We follow the terrible fate of a woman trying to protect her family in Ireland, which is sliding towards totalitarianism. From the outset we felt uneasy, immersed in the constant claustrophobia of Lynch’s powerfully constructed world, and haunted by that claustrophobia…This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, invigorating and daring“, she said.

In addition to Lynch, five more authors and their books claimed the prize this year: Study for Obedience by Sara Bernstein, If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, This Other Eden Paradise”) by Paul Harding, Western Lane by Chetna Maru and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

About the Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize – one of the most prestigious literary prizes. It was first awarded in 1969 and was originally awarded to an author living in one of the countries of Great Britain for a novel written in English. Then the prize went to Percy Howard Newby for the essay “You will have to answer for it”.

Since 2014, works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in Britain, can apply for it.

In different years, such famous writers as Iris Murdoch, Salman Rushdie, John Coetzee, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, etc. became its winners. Five Booker Prize winners – William Golding, Nadine Gordimer, Vidyadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, John Coetzee and Ishiguro Kazuo – later received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 2022, the laureate was the Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka with the book “Seven Months of Maali Almeida”.

Read also: Without Kurkov. The Booker International Prize 2023 announced the shortlist