Literature

Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch: ‘The world ends over and over again, in different places around the world’

The sixth Irish winner of the prestigious accolade, for his book Prophet Song, describes the transformative moment as a ‘sliding-door reality’

Paul Lynch: ‘Every age has its writers, because every age is different from what’s come before.’ Picture: Getty

“The pressure is metamorphic,” says Paul Lynch. “It’s extraordinary. The dinner starts hours earlier [than the prize-giving], so it’s a long evening. And then the pressure builds.”

Lynch appears across my screen from London, on roughly his 29th interview since winning the Booker Prize two nights ago. On Sunday, November 26, the (Limerick-born) Donegal man attended a ceremony in Old Billingsgate, along with the other shortlisted authors, Chetna Maroo, Jonathan Escoffery, Sarah Bernstein, Paul Harding, ...