Paul Lynch (writer)

Paul Lynch (writer)
Paul Lynch (born 9 May 1977) is an Irish novelist known for his poetic, lyrical style and exploration of complex themes. He has published five novels and has won several awards, including the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.
Biography
Lynch was born in Limerick in the south-west of Ireland in May 1977; his parents and all his family are from Limerick and other parts of County Limerick. However, when he was nine months old, his parents moved to the north of County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, where he was raised. His parents settled in the north of Inishowen, a peninsula on the northern coastline of Ulster, with Lynch spending the rest of his childhood and teenage years at Malin Head and, later, in Carndonagh. His parents moved to Inishowen because of his father's job with the then Coast and Cliff Rescue Service (CCRS), which later became, in 1991, the Irish Marine Emergency Service (IMES; now called the Irish Coast Guard). He has not lived in County Donegal since 1995. He now lives in Dublin, his longtime home, where he was formerly both deputy chief sub-editor and chief film critic for The Sunday Tribune, before he turned to writing fiction.
His debut novel, Red Sky in Morning, was the subject of a six-publisher auction in London, and won him acclaim in the United States and France, where the book was a finalist for France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (Best Foreign Book Award). The novel was inspired by a TV documentary about the excavation of Duffy's Cut, a site near Philadelphia where, in the 1830s, Irish emigrants, mainly from Ulster, were discovered in an unmarked mass grave. It explores themes of emigration, racism and brutality and was described by NPR's Alan Cheuse as the work of a “lapidary young master”.
Lynch's second novel, The Black Snow, describes the return of an Irish emigrant to his native community in County Donegal and the subsequent descent into tragedy when a byre catches fire. The novel was shortlisted for many prizes and won France's Prix Libr'à Nous for best foreign novel. In Sunday Times Ireland, Theo Dorgan called the book “a significant achievement”.
His third novel, Grace (2017), is both a bildungsroman and picaresque set during the Irish Famine and tells the story of a young girl's struggle for survival. The novel won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year prize and was shortlisted for many awards, including The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. In a review, The New York Times said: "Lynch is a sure-footed tightrope walker...his lush, poetic prose [in Grace] deliberately and painfully acts as a foil to the reality of the famine.”
Lynch's fourth novel, Beyond the Sea (2019), was inspired by a true event and is an existential tale involving two castaways set on a boat in the Pacific Ocean. The novel has been compared to the work of Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Herman Melville, William Golding, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Pablo Neruda by various reviewers, and won France's Prix Gens de Mers in 2022.
Lynch's fifth novel, Prophet Song, is "a chilling study of Ireland becoming a fascist state". Described by The Guardian as "an impressive novel in stylistic as well as political terms", it was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
Literary themes and style
Lynch's novels often focus on the trials of the human spirit and examine metaphysical and existentialist themes in both Irish and exotic settings. His work explores topics such as alienation, displacement, suffering, reality, belief, religion, and transcendence, as well as meditations on memory and identity.
Lynch's writing has been described as "bold, grandiose, mesmeric," and he has been compared to authors such as Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Herman Melville, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett. He has been praised for his ability to blend poetic language with gritty realism and for his insights into the human condition. He is considered one of the most important Irish writers of his generation.
Awards
2013: Best Newcomer at Bord Gáis Irish Books of the Year, shortlisted
2014: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, finalist
2014: Prix du Premier Roman, nominated
2015: Prix du Roman Fnac, nominated
2015: Prix Femina, nominated
2016: Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award, shortlisted
2016: Prix des Lecteurs Privat, winner
2016: Prix Libr'à Nous for Best Foreign Novel, winner
2018: The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, winner
2018: The Walter Scott Prize, shortlisted
2018: The William Saroyan International Prize, shortlisted
2019: Grand Prix de L'Héroïne, shortlisted
2019: Prix Littérature Monde, shortlisted
2019: Prix Jean-Monnet de Littérature Européenne, shortlisted
2020: Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award, winner
2022: Prix Gens de Mer, winner
2023: Booker Prize, shortlisted
Novels
Red Sky in Morning. London: Quercus, 2013. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013
The Black Snow. London: Quercus, 2014. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015
Grace. London: Oneworld Publications, 2017. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2017
Beyond the Sea. London: Oneworld Publications, 2019. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020
Prophet Song. London: Oneworld Publications, 2023.
References
External links
Paul Lynch website
1977 births
20th-century Irish male writers
20th-century Irish novelists
20th-century Irish writers
21st-century Irish male writers
21st-century Irish novelists
Irish male novelists
Irish novelists
Irish writers
Living people