On Sunday evening, author Paul Lynch was awarded the Booker Prize for his novel Prophet Song. In a one-off interview with Auraist, Lynch spoke about the creative process behind his winning work, and the importance of literary style in the crafting of profound psychology.
Describing his experience, Lynch said that the authoritarian horrors of Prophet Song had not been planned beforehand, and had emerged from the burst of language that made up the book’s first page. He argued that ‘literary style should be a way of knowing how the world is met in its unfolding,’ and that ‘vocabulary, syntax etc., like mobilised troops, follow this initial command.’
As the writing of the book progressed, Lynch said he could sense ‘the enormous energy of this book’ had reached its own ‘terra incognita’. He further explained that the long sentences and lack of paragraph breaks in Prophet Song had been used to create a sense of inevitability and to ‘lock the reader into the same claustrophobic space that Eilish inhabits.’
To read the full interview with Paul Lynch and learn more about his creative process, visit Auraist.
