Prophet Song

Imagine a women-centric movie capturing her intense emotional and physical struggle, overlaid on a movie with panoramic view of a war or conflict. The former can be Changeling, Angelina Jolie starrer Hollywood movie or Mother India, Nargis Dutt starrer Bollywood movie and the latter can be Hollywood’s Schindler’s List or Dunkirk. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is precisely a unique tale of a woman’s struggle narrated in the poignant backdrop of her neighborhood and country going from bad to worse.

Set in dystopian Ireland, the Booker Prize 2023 winner has a measured opening line ‘The night has come and she has not heard the knocking, standing at the window looking out into the garden’. ‘She’ is Eilish Stack, a scientist who works for the government and mother-of-four and ‘The knocking’ is by plainclothesman, from GNSB-the newly formed state secret police, who want to interrogate Larry, the Deputy General Secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland and husband of Eilish. Larry is questioned by the GNSB in the early part of the story and though the book ends, Eilish never heard anything about her spouse after it. In between, the State started drafting men and young boys into security force and Eilish moves her young son Mark into some hideout. However, due to extremely difficult circumstances at the hideout, Mark runs aways and joins the ‘rebel’ group challenging the State and again, Eilish never heard anything concrete about him. Eilish’s father, who is suffering from dementia, lives on the other side of the town and is not ready to move to her daughter’s place. It adds emotional and physical strain as Eilish must juggle between her home with kids, workplace and her father’s place as the town was littered with blockades by the State and the ‘rebel’ groups and curfew was a norm of the day. Adding further woe, Eilish faces office politics as employees must align with the State’s ‘interests’ to keep the job. Her another son who was hurt during one of the protests was admitted into a hospital and later picked up and tortured by the State. Finally, Eilish tries to flee Ireland.

This 300+ pager by Paul Lynch is a fiction but it takes the reader to what is happening in different parts of the world. Lynch’s uncommon writing with paragraph breaks creates the dark ambience in which Eilish, her family and many more goes through. The book has painted several scenes at individual, institutional, society and state level, which a reader can visualize between words and lines. The opening of several body bags at mortuary by Eilish in search of her son; the talks, gossips and maneuvering at workplace of Eilish; the shifting perception of society/mob regarding individual groups /communities responsible for bomb blasts and break-drown of law and order; and the use of different machineries by the State to justify its ideology are vivid. The dilemma of taking the decision to leave and when to leave the town or the country, affected by a conflict or a war, has come out prominently in the book and it also delves deep into the contributing factors. It also resonates, as in current times, scenes of people leaving or living in a war or the conflict affected towns are countries have been in print and electronic media almost every day. The struggle of Eilish in finding a vehicle to take her injured son to a hospital, locating a working hospital among many damaged ones and the yawning gap between needs of services at hospital and available supplies is another scene which connects a reader with the current situation in different corners of the conflict and war affected world. The escape of Eilish with her child has several tense moments and reflects what several thousand displaced people go through in search of a safe place.

Prophet Song is an apt and must read in current times as it reflects the present reality of the world and perhaps reiterates an unambiguous message that a conflict or a war is extremely ugly and it must stop.