“The song of the Prophet”, by Paul Lynch: a frightening dystopia

Your first novels take place in the past, this one in contemporary times, but still in Ireland. For what ?

Because I am Irish and that is the country I know best. Today, Ireland is a modern state, which has been secularized, and lives a quiet social revolution, with progressive ideas.

Economically, we serve as a connection between the United States and Europe. Many multinationals of “tech” have installed their headquarters in Ireland, to pay less taxes, which brings billions of euros to the economy.

But everything is not rosy: democracy is weakened, both by social networks and by the terrorist threat. Recently for example, our health services have been hacked …

In your novel, the political situation is even catastrophic!

I imagined an Ireland that would have been led for two years by a populist government. Everyone has ignored successive alert signals, so that when the book opens, it is already too late: the state of emergency has been decreed, control of the judicial system is on the way, the demonstrations are repressed …

I could have located my novel in another country – Syria, for example – but I wanted this story to speak to everyone and in particular Western.

Can you introduce us to your heroine?

Eilish is a biologist, with a good professional situation; Her husband works in education. They have four children, including a baby. Eilish also takes care of his elderly father, Simon. She is not interested in public affairs, but one evening, two men knock on the door … and politics rushes into the home.

It is for me a kind of heroine of Greek tragedy struggling with the forces of destiny. I wanted to be as close as possible to her, to follow her in her daily actions, to enter her psyche, her thoughts, her way of acting or reacting, her contradictions.

How does she react?

Eilish is intelligent, responsible. But it is taken by the thousand daily tasks when nothing works as before. Her husband was arrested, her father lost her head. She must ensure that he lacks nothing, but also find milk for the baby, console the children, remind her teenager to return before night …

With all these contingencies, she does not understand, or does not want to grasp, the reality of the situation. It reflects the collective denial in which we live.

It must in particular manage children who each react in their own way …

Mark, the elder, is radicalized; Molly, previously very extroverted, falls into depression; Bailey, the youngest, to whom she lied about the arrest of her father, absorbs all her own anxiety …

What I am trying to tell in this novel is the existential cost for each of the arrival of a fascist state. We already have blatant examples in China or Russia, with repression and information control, but also in the United States with the “post-truth” that is essential …

Why did you titrate your work The song of the Prophet ?

He evokes the end of the world prophesied by many religions. Eilish saw a kind of crossing the nine circles of hell, gradually understanding what the end of time meant. Today, we watch her on television. Tomorrow she can knock on the door.

What concerns you in our contemporary world and makes you want to write?

During the last centuries, we have lived with the contribution of the philosophy of the Enlightenment: skepticism, empiricism, objective reason. Our references were the same, on science, on the place of man in the universe.

Today, this consensus shatters. The objective truth, attested by sciences such as, for example, global warming, is no longer accepted everywhere. The responsibility of social networks is immense.

You are very critical of them …

For my part, I would close them! They broadcast a number of post-truths, these lies that appear true and destabilize our democracies. And in this vagueness, in this nonsense, some know how to tickle our most primary instincts and play on our feelings, first of all, fear. This relativism leads to populism, and this leads to societies by substance.

How not to be completely desperate?

It is necessary to regain meaning, collective, transcendence. Raised in a theocratic Ireland, I put aside religion. But I think we need spirituality. We turn to culture to give meaning to our lives, but that is not enough. We need to transcend our existence. As a writer, I am pessimistic, but I have two children, and as a father, I am optimistic!