The explosive literary sensation and winner of the 2023 Booker Prize. As read by Clare Dunne (‘Kin.’)

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB – the Garda National Service Bureau – 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 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?

The Author
Paul Lynch is the prize-winning author of five novels: ‘Prophet Song’, ‘Beyond the Sea’, ‘Grace’, ‘The Black Snow’, and ‘Red Sky in Morning’. He was awarded The Booker Prize 2023 for his esteemed novel ‘Prophet Song’. He has won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and the French booksellers’ prize Prix Libr’à Nous for best foreign novel. He has also been shortlisted for UK’s Walter Scott Prize, the US’s William Saroyan International Prize, and France’s Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, among other prizes. Libération has called Lynch “one of today’s greatest Irish writers”. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.

Reader: Clare Dunne
Author: Paul Lynch
Abridger: Rowan Routh
Producer: Michael Shannon

A BBC Audio Northern Ireland Production for BBC Radio 4. Show less