Prophet Song
Book description
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 • NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A prophetic masterpiece." — Ron Charles, Washington Post
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Prophet Song as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I found this book to be a very disturbing, but nonetheless absorbing, read. Set during an unspecified political upheaval that leads to civil war in Ireland, it details the gradual collapse of society, almost unnoticed by the characters at first as things seemingly carry on close to normal, but eventually gather pace until people are subsumed (and consumed) in a totalitarian police state.
The story is frighteningly believable, particularly in the current global political climate, and all the more so since it tells the tale of an ordinary family discovering how their lives can disintegrate so easily in the face…
I found this book compelling because of its chilling reminder of a lesson we apparently learned, but seem to have forgotten, from the 1930s rise of European fascism – that a robust democracy can quickly and easily, and through its own democratic processes, become a viciously fascist order.
Set in modern-day Ireland, the book beautifully weaves its political criticism through the moving story of one ordinary family caught up in the horrible transformation.
From Joel's list on revealing the inhumanity of authoritarianism and fascism.
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