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Paul Lynch, Prophet Song, Oneworld Books, 2023. 320 pgs.
Although I was reading about a fictitious Ireland, as I began Prophet Song, Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning novel, I felt I was in contemporary Hong Kong, the years 2019–2020 to be exact, when nearly everything changed in this city.
The response between the questioner and the questioned early in the novel was chilling to me personally. The questioner: “Your behaviour looks like the conduct of someone inciting hatred against the state…” and the questioned: “Let me understand you correctly, he says, you’re asking me to prove my behaviour is not seditious?” How can any Hongkonger not reference current events in the city on reading this?
In Prophet Song’s Ireland, an Emergency Powers Act has come into effect in the “ongoing crisis facing the state, an act that gives supplemental provision and power to the… for the maintenance of public order…” In real-life Hong Kong, a certain National Security Law (NSL) came into force because the city had “become a gaping hole in national security, and our city’s prosperity and stability are at risk” through “external forces” and the “illegal acts of radicals” (Carrie Lam, former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, “Letter to Hong Kong Citizens”, 29 May 2020). A special Office for Safeguarding National Security has been set up with special powers (any officer of which “shall not be subject to inspection, search or detention by law enforcement officers of the region”—Article 60 of the NSL) as well as a special police unit with special powers to search and detain.
When the mother in the fictitious Ireland sees “police with batons, they are beating the marchers into grovelling shapes, they are beating them to the corner of the streets tear gas skulking within some slow time occurrence while without the marchers flee in repeat clips”, I am reminded of the many times tear gas was sprayed on protesters and the nearby public, who experienced such a banquet much too often, in Hong Kong.
The Ireland in Lynch’s novel is rapidly descending into a totalitarian state, fractured by civil war—we don’t quite know exactly what has led to this situation (current global events in the rolling back of democracy could perhaps provide clues). Luckily, the Hong Kong we know has not reached the point that this fictitious Ireland reaches by the end of the novel. Let’s hope that the creep of gradualism does not lead us that far.
Prophet Song is told largely through the eyes of a mother who is trying to keep her family safe, her rising sense of panic as first her husband disappears, then her eldest son, and her indecision about what to do. To flee or not to flee? We feel this sense of panic and urgency through how the novel is structured—Lynch writes in huge slabs without paragraphs and with minimal use of punctuation. There is a lot of dialogue without quotation marks. But it’s not difficult to read and understand the story. What is difficult and painful is the story itself. A story that unhappily is still being played out in other countries in real life. Reading Prophet Song, and in particular its ending, will help people understand and empathise with people who leave the countries they love.
How to cite: Eagleton, Jennifer. “To Flee or Not to Flee: Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 10 Jan. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/01/10/prophet-song.
Jennifer Eagleton, a Hong Kong resident since October 1997, is a close observer of Hong Kong society and politics. Jennifer has written for Hong Kong Free Press, Mekong Review, and Education about Asia. Her first book is Discursive Change in Hong Kong (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and she is currently writing another book on Hong Kong political discourse for Palgrave MacMillan. Her poetry has appeared in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, People, Pandemic & ####### (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), and Making Space: A Collection of Writing and Art (Cart Noodles Press, 2023). A past president of the Hong Kong Women in Publishing Society, Jennifer teaches and researches part-time at a number of universities in Hong Kong. [All contributions by Jennifer Eagleton.]