A Descent into Pandemonium

In 1949, English writer George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984). It is a work of dystopian fiction and was immediately a literary sensation. Its depiction of a totalitarian state where political oppression and psychological suppression were ubiquitous tickled the imagination of a global audience. It also doubles as a cautionary tale with bleak visions of the future. Nineteen Eighty-Four has since become a beloved literary classic that transcended both time and geographical limits. In retrospect, who would have thought that a couple of decades later, the vision of Orwell and those who came before him would slowly turn into a grim reality? The ascent of populist leaders is slowly paving the way for totalitarian states and fascist regimes. Political upheaval is sweeping the world over.

As Nineteen Eighty-Four has proven, literature plays a seminal role in capturing a dystopian society. The concepts it introduced such as Big Brother and the Thought Police have even trickled into contemporary popular culture. The popularity of the novel was seminal in the ascent of dystopian fiction. This probe into a bleak future has become an even more prevalent theme in contemporary literature. Popular literary series such as Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking Trilogy, Veronica Roth’s Divergent Trilogy, and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games further underlined the messages and visions depicted by their predecessors. Some of them have also been adapted into films. As the world slowly slides into pandemonium and social norms are broken, such works have become more timely and relevant.

Contributing his voice to this growing phalanx of dystopian novels is Irish writer Paul Lynch. Since launching his literary debut in 2013 with the publication of Red Sky in Morning, Lynch has, over the years, built a credible literary vitae. His debut novel immediately elevated him to literary stardom. His succeeding works further fulfilled the promise that his debut novel held. His works have earned him several accolades and recognitions from various parts of the world. They have been lauded by both readers and literary pundits alike. His fifth and latest novel, Prophet Song, published a decade after his debut novel, is a further fulfillment of his promise as a top-caliber storyteller.

“It’s plain as day what they’re up to, he says, they’re trying to chase out like vermin ,that’s what they’re doing, they want to exterminate it’s like rats, it’s just a matter of time and effort, I used to work as a city planner you know, there’s a finite number of roads and buildings in this city, drop enough ordinance and after a time you have put a hole in every road, you’ll have struck every block of flats, every shop and house then you keep going night and day you just keep dropping more and more until you smashed every structure into the ground and you keep going until you turn the brickwork into dust and there’s nothing left but the people who refuse to leave”

~ Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Prophet Song takes the readers to a dystopian Republic of Ireland. Ireland’s slip into totalitarianism started when the authoritarian National Alliance Party seized control of the country. Their seizure of power was instigated by the trade unionists lobbying for an increase in teachers’ wages. Two years after ascending into power, the rightwing party passed the Emergency Powers Act as a response to the “ongoing crisis facing the state.” This newly enforced Act paved the way for the formation of the Garda National Services Bureau, a new secret police force. The Act also provided far-reaching powers to the Irish national police (the Garda Síochána) and the judiciary. The GNSB spearheads the implementation of the provisions of the Act.

However, rather than stymying unrest and restoring political and social stability, the GNSB, with its limitless power, used its powers to exercise brutality. Fundamental constitutional rights that denizens of the country were previously able to exercise under a liberal democracy were viewed as seditious. The citizenry’s freedom of speech and right to peaceful assembly were impeded. In essence, the GNSB was formed to keep the citizenry in check. The focus of the novel, however, was not on the rightwing party’s ascent to power nor did it zero in on the dynamics of an authoritarian state. These themes were still underlined in the story but they were explored through the experiences of a family whose once harmonious life was disrupted by a knock on their door.

One fateful evening, the Stack household received a knock on their door. The knock was unusual except that it was two GNSB plainclothesmen checking up on them. With the GNSB having a reputation that preceded its name, Eilish, the Stack matriarch, was naturally concerned when the GNSB looked for and wanted to speak to her husband, Larry, a teacher and the deputy general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland. When the unexpected knocks came, Eilish was simply standing in her kitchen after a long and exhausting day of work at the biotech firm where she was a senior manager. On top of this, she was the mother of four, the youngest of whom was barely a couple of months old.

Unfortunately, Larry was not around during that moment, hence, he was requested to appear at the Kevin Street Garda Station for a chat. Upon dropping at the Garda Station on a dark and rainy night, Larry was confronted with allegations of sowing discord and unrest. A firm believer in truth and justice, Larry was unafraid of voicing his advocacy, hoping that the state would lend its ear to what the trade union was fighting for. However, the authoritarian regime viewed his views and subsequent actions as seditious. The regime believes that Larry and his fellow unionists were promoting unnecessary hatred against the state. By the end of the first chapter, Larry, along with other trade unionists and fellow teachers, have disappeared after they participated in a peaceful union march. What ensued was a walking nightmare for Eilish.

“She is watching a man lying dead or asleep on a blanket nearby dressed in a crumpled tan suit with blood discolouring his sleeve, his hand clutching a plastic bag filled with bread rolls, alone black shoe on a foot. Another man she saw been carried into the emergency room was wearing just one sport shoe, so many shoes gone astray she thinks, so many shoes dislodged while their owners are carried by the arms and legs or dragged by the armpits into the backs of cars and vans and dragged again into emergency rooms without a gurney, the orphaned shoes kicked aside in the rush or left to die on the street or on footpaths like an unblinking eye awaiting the return of its owner”

~ Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Like any wife, Eilish vehemently sought for traces of her husband. She petitioned for his release despite her having no iota about where Larry was or where he was taken. Her pleas, however, again fell on deaf ears. When she heard of the possibility of Larry being sent to an internment camp for dissidents, she was told to stop asking questions and to stop drawing attention to herself and her family. But how can she keep the boat from sinking when one of her anchors was forcibly taken from her? Nevertheless, Eilish had to muster the courage and keep her act together for their children. She had to think and act quickly. Apart from being a mother and a wife, Eilish also had to fulfill her role as a daughter as she also had to look after her father Simon who was living alone despite suffering from dementia.

This was, however, just the tip of the iceberg. The authoritarian regime’s relentless drive for control and power altered the definition of normal. Everything imploded. Meanwhile, on the fringes of society, the rebel movement was slowly crafting its move. It didn’t take time before the tensions percolated into a full-blown warcry, with the streets of Dublin turning into a literal battle scene. Peace and harmony dissolved into horror. As civil unrest gripped the rest of the nation, neighbors, friends, and even family members started disappearing. Meanwhile, the rest of the world served as spectators, watching on tenterhook how everything would unfold without giving much assistance. The images Lynch painted evoke chilling parallels in the present. The fiction slowly becomes a projection of the present pandemonium experienced in different parts of the world.

Take the cases of the recent Russian occupation of Ukraine and the Israeli and Palestine conflict. In the latter, a case was brought against Israel in the International Court of Justice. Israel was indicted of genocide to everyone’s delight. The euphoria was, however, short-lived as the best solution the body could come up with was to order Israel to prevent genocidal acts rather than ordering Israel to stop its offensive or call for a ceasefire. This underlines the hypocrisy of the bodies market themselves as stewards of equality and justice. There were also scenes reminiscent of the police crackdowns during the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. The case of Lynch’s totalitarian Ireland is no different from this case which only underscores the reality that we are slowly slipping into such a world of chaos.

The novel is apocalyptic, a grim diagnosis of what the future has in store for everyone painted through the world of the Stack family. Their world was closing in. There was a sense of claustrophobia which was further evoked by sentences bereft of paragraph breaks. It created a breathless atmosphere where the characters no longer have a feeling of liberty. The world of chaos was contrasted by the details of domestic life vividly captured in Prophet Song. Mundane facets of the Stack household were antitheses to the chaos unfolding on the streets where airstrikes and vandalism have become ubiquitous. It was as if in maintaining her routine, Eilish was hanging on the tiniest slivers of normalcy.

“You speak about this word rights as though you understand the word rights, show me what rights were born with man, show me what tablet they are written on, where nature has decreed it is so. She goes to speak but he is moving out of the seat towards her and she is afraid to look into his eyes, is arrested by his stink, the admixture of food and cigarettes and something malodorous that comes from under the skin, she knows what it is, this stench that sets free her terror. You call yourself a scientist and yet you believe in rights that do not exist, the rights you speak of cannot be verified, they are a fiction decreed by the state, it is up to the state to decide what it believes or does not believe according to its needs, surely you understand this.”

~ Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

On the other hand, this mirrors the general passivity of the public who tend to ignore the red flags until they have already plunged into gaping holes they cannot escape from. Even Eilish’s sister who lives in Toronto admonishes Eilish: history is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave. Leaving your roots, however, is easier said than done. It was an impasse that Eilish found herself in. What if Larry returns to their home, unscathed? But apart from being a wife and a daughter, Eilish is also a mother who must think about what is best for her children. She has difficult decisions to make lest the rest of her world crumble under the weight of all the pressures coming from all directions.

Lynch wrote a compelling tale, reeling the readers in. However, as the story moves forward, one can’t help but feel that something is missing. Lynch, without preamble, dragged the readers in medias res. The descent into chaos was so immediate that there was barely a space to grasp what was happening. There was a lack of context to the events that the novel captured. While the portrait Lynch painted with his proverbial pen was universal, the gap does create a distance between the readers from the plight of the Irish. This detail, however, does little to undo the gripping tale that Lynch has spun.

The winner of the prestigious Booker Prize in 2023, Prophet Song is a seminal chronicle of our times. It is a vivid and lush tapestry brimming with the horrors that have gripped us in the contemporary. It is a bleak diagnosis of the future. It is a timely cautionary tale. Should we fail to get our acts together, then we are paving the path toward totalitarianism where liberties are eroded. It is a reminder that societal collapse is a realistic fear. The novel, however, does not only provide caution. With the images captured by Prophet Song already a reality in various parts of the world, Lynch’s latest novel is also a subtle call for empathy for those who are experiencing totalitarian regimes. Despite the terrors, hatred, and descent into pandemonium it captured, Prophet Song is an immersive tale of our time.

“and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,”

~ Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
Book Specs

Author: Paul Lynch
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Publishing Date: 2023
Number of Pages: 309
Genre: Dystopia, Literary

Synopsis

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her stop. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are ere to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappeared, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

About the Author

Paul Lynch was born on May 9, 1977, in Limerick in the south-west of Ireland, the middle child in a family of three children. When he was nine months old, his parents moved to the north of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, where he was raised. His parents settled in the north of Inishowen, a peninsula on the northern coastline of Ulster. Lynch spent the rest of his childhood and teenage years at Malin Head and, later, in Carndonagh. Lynch read English and Philosophy at University College, Dublin (UCD), but did not graduate. Before shifting to a literary career, Lynch was both deputy chief sub-editor and chief film critic for The Sunday Tribune.

Lynch made his literary debut in 2013 with the publication of Red Sky in Morning. It received critical acclaim overseas and was even a finalist for  France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Award). His sophomore novel, The Black Snow, was published in 2015. Like its predecessor, the novel was nominated and shortlisted for a slew of literary awards and won France’s Prix Libr’à Nous for best foreign novel. More recognition came with the publication of his third novel, Grace (2017), which won the  Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year prize and was shortlisted for a slew of literary prizes, including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Beyond the Sea (2019) won France’s Prix Gens de Mers in 2022. His latest novel, Prophet Song (2023), won the Booker Prize.

Lynch is currently residing in Dublin. He has two children and is separated from his wife.