Prophet Song

Following a scientist whose husband is taken away by the newly formed Irish secret police, the award-winning author spins a finely-wrought and terrifying vision of Ireland in the grip of a tyrannical government.

Winner of the Booker Prize 2023

The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism 

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here 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 disappears, 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?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.