Paul Lynch, frontrunner for this year’s Booker Prize, has revealed the source of inspiration for his acclaimed novel, Prophet Song. In an interview with fellow Irish author Peter Murphy on Auraist, Lynch spoke about the burst of language that sparked the story and the role of the prose style in creating plausible and profound psychology.
The author describes how the near-future horrors of the book were not planned beforehand and the fascist theme did not dictate how the book was written. He argues that literary style is a way of knowing how the world is experienced in its unfolding, and shapes his sentences around this truth. As he wrote the book, he realised he had reached his own ‘terra incognita’, with the long sentences and lack of paragraph breaks creating a sense of inevitability and locking the reader into the same claustrophobic space as protagonist Eilish.
The Booker Prize winner will be announced on November 26th, with Lynch potentially taking the crown as a master sentence-builder. Read his interview on prose style at Auraist, which selects the best-written books from major prize shortlists and reviews.
