Suzanne Harrington: I hope this story wins The Booker Prize - it's a masterclass in empathy

Shout out to Paul Lynch, whose fifth novel Prophet Song — on the Booker shortlist — showcases an Irish dystopia set in a future so ordinary and relatable it could be happening the week after next. 

Suzanne Harrington. Pic: Andrew Hasson

Usually, when we think of an Irish dystopia, it is stuff that has already happened — a past rural theocracy with a population cowed and bullied by self-elected morality enforcers; the kind of world portrayed in the 1918 novel Valley of the Squinting Windows, or Angela’s Ashes, or the Ferns Report, or any other dystopian snapshot of the past in Ireland.

Not anymore. Unthinkable that we would ever give our power away like that again, allow ourselves to be ruled again by authoritarianism, to permit totalitarianism to cleave us apart.