The novel is the winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, already being called the "Irish 1984" and a "new Handmaid's Tale." In an interview, Lynch said that his book is an attempt to truly understand other people. To create a sense of the inevitability of the events in the novel for a reader to whom news from all corners of the globe seems distant and unreal.
One evening, microbiologist Eilish Stack, a mother of four, answers a knock at the door. On the doorstep are two operatives from the newly formed State National Security Service, who would like to speak with Eilish's husband, a teachers' union activist. And after a protest demonstration, her husband disappears—and Eilish finds herself trapped in a nightmare logic: social institutions are crumbling before her eyes, the government has turned a quiet suburb into a war zone, and in order to save her family, Eilish is forced to attempt the impossible…
A cautionary novel about how easily we can lose the freedoms we take for granted, yet the author's greatest achievement is that the incredible events described seem absolutely real.
Author: Paul Lynch
Translation: Marina Klevetenko
Pages: 400 (offset paper). Hardcover
Dimensions: 217x146x28 mm
