The Prophet’s Song, set in the Irish dictatorship, won the Booker Prize

Irish writer Paul Lynch’s book The Prophet’s Song, set in Ireland under an authoritarian regime, won this year’s Booker Prize, the organization announced this Sunday.

On the prize’s website, one of the most important in the English language, you can read about the winning work: the book “poignantly represents a mother’s determination to protect her family as Ireland’s liberal democracy slides inexorably and grimly into a totalitarian regime.”

“Readers will find this book timely and unforgettable. It is an impressive feat for a writer to be able to convey the social and political anxieties of his moment so vividly,” the jury adds.

Paul Lynch, 46, won the Booker Prize for his fifth book, after already winning several awards for his previous works.

After receiving the award, Lynch began by joking: “Here’s to my hard-earned anonymity.” The writer subsequently stressed that the book was difficult to write and that “the rational part of him believed that by writing it he was condemning his career.”

In addition to Lynch, finalists for the prize, which honors works of literary fiction published in English in the UK and/or Ireland, included Canadian Sarah Bernstein for A Study in Obedience and North Americans Jonathan Escoffery and Paul Harding for If I Survive and, respectively. This Other Paradise,” Irishman Paul Murray with “Bee Sting” and Briton Chetna Maru with “Western Lane.”

None of the Booker shortlisted authors (all of whom are debutants as such) publish in Portugal.

The jury was chaired by Canadian writer Esi Edugyan, and the remaining panel of judges included actress Adjoa Andoh, poet and editor Mary Jean Chan, author and professor James Shapiro, and actor and author Robert Webb.