Paul Lynch

Paul Lynch is the Booker Prize-winning author of five novels: Prophet Song, Beyond The Sea, Grace, The Black Snow, and Red Sky in Morning.

His debut novel Red Sky in Morning was a finalist for France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize) and was nominated for the Prix du Premier Roman (First Novel Prize). It was a book of the year in The Irish Times, The Toronto Star, the Irish Independent and the Sunday Business Post.

​The Black Snow won the French booksellers’ prize Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel and the inaugural Prix des Lecteurs Privat. It was nominated for the Prix Femina and the Prix du Roman Fnac (Fnac Novel Prize).

​Grace won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize. In France it was shortlisted for the Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature, among other prizes. It was a book of the year in the Guardian, the Irish Independent, Kirkus and Esquire, a Staff Pick at The Paris Review and an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review.

​Beyond The Sea was published in September 2019. It was chosen as a book of the year in the Irish Independent by Sebastian Barry who called the book “masterly”. In 2021, it was published to wide acclaim in France where it won the 2022 Prix Gens de Mers.

​Prophet Song was published in August 2023 and won the Booker Prize as well as being shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year. The Booker Prize jury called the novel “soul-shattering… truly a masterful work”. John Boyne in The Sunday Independent called Prophet Song “entirely original”. The Observer called the book “a crucial book for our current times… brilliant, haunting”. The TLS called it “thunderously powerful”. The Guardian called it “an urgent, important read”.

Paul Lynch was born in Limerick in 1977, grew up in Co Donegal, and lives in Dublin. In 2024, he was appointed Distinguished Writing Fellow at Maynooth University and was elected to Aosdána, which honours artists who have made outstanding contributions to the creative arts in Ireland.