Paul Lynch Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Paul Lynch is an accomplished and prize-winning Irish author. He was born in Limerick in 1977.

His first fictional book came out in 2013 and is titled Red Sky In Morning. It was a finalist for the Best Foreign Book Prize in France and was nominated for a First Novel Prize. It also sparked a six-publisher auction fight over the rights. In the United States, it was a Book of the Month on Amazon.com and was also featured on All Things Considered on NPR. It was also named a book of the year in such publications as The Toronto Star, The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Sunday Business Post.

Lynch followed this up with his 2014 book The Black Snow. It was a Book of the Month on Amazon and won the Prix Libr’a Nous for Best Foreign novel as well as the Prix des Lecteurs Privat. It was nominated for several more. Multiple publications praised it, including The Sunday Times, The Toronto Star, and All Things Considered, where Alan Cheuse compared the author’s writing to somewhere between Seamus Heaney and Cormac McCarthy.

Lynch followed this up with the 2017 novel Grace. The book came out to much acclaim and was praised by The Washington Post. It was named the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. It also was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. It was also shortlisted in France for the Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature and was a Staff Pick for The Paris Review and named an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review, as well as a book of the year in Esquire, the Irish Independent, Kirkus, and Esquire.

It was followed by the 2019 novel Beyond the Sea, which was a book of the year in the Irish Independent. It won the 2022 Prix Gens de Mers and was praised by The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times.

Prophet Song came out in 2023, winning the 2023 Booker Prize as well as the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It has been shortlisted for various prizes and praised by various publications.

Paul’s parents are from Limerick and they moved to north of County Donegal in Ulster, where he grew up, when he was nine years old. The family settled down in the north of Inishowen, and he would spend the rest of his time at Malin Head and then Carndonagh. His parents moved there because of his father’s job with the Coast and Cliff Rescue Service, which then became the Irish Marine Emergency Service, and then the Irish Coast Guard. His mother worked as a teacher of adult literacy. He was the oldest child of three.

He was appointed Distinguished Writing Fellow in 2024 at Maynooth University. He was also elected to Aosdána, honoring artists who have contributed in outstanding ways to the creative arts in Ireland. Today he lives in Dublin.

Paul attended University College Dublin, where he studied English and philosophy but did not graduate. He has also been the deputy chief sub-editor and the chief film critic for The Sunday Tribune before he focused on writing fiction as his occupation.

His books have been known to focus on various trials of the human spirit, taking a closer look at a variety of themes both metaphysical and existential in exotic and Irish settings. His work goes through such topics as suffering, belief, reality, displacement, transcendence, religion, alienation and more, as well as focusing on identity and memory. His writing has been compared to such authors as Melville, Faulkner, McCarthy, Heaney, and Beckett, and has been called ‘bold’ and ‘grandiose’ and praised for his examination of the human condition.

He was married but has since separated from his wife. He has two children.

Beyond the Sea is a fictional book from Paul Lynch. If you love authors such as Hemingway and want to check out a newer voice in the literary world who is already quickly becoming a classic, check this book out!

Bolivar and Hector are both fishermen, and they have set out from their village in South America. They find that a sudden storm that pops up has cast them adrift. Now they are in a horrible situation that they never saw coming.

The days go on and they find that no one is coming to rescue them. Now they have to contend with their environment and come to terms with each other if they are to have the best chance of surviving.

This is the story of two men against the odds who are trying to take on nature and come out on top. In the process, they find out what it means to be a man and more in this world. Can they survive this scenario they’ve found themselves in? Read Beyond the Sea to see if Hector and Bolivar are able to survive!

Prophet Song is a fantastic work of fiction from Paul Lynch. If you love a good original story, then check this book out!

This is the picture of a society that is on the brink. A mother contends with a terrible choice that may end up changing her life forever. In the city of Dublin, on a cold and wet evening, Eilish Stack comes to the front door at a knock.

She is a scientist and a mother to four, and opens the door to find that the GNSB are there. They are the secret police in Ireland, just formed, and they have come to interrogate her trade unionist husband.

All of Ireland is starting to crumble. The country is being gripped by a government that is deciding to turn toward tyranny. Eilish thought that she knew her world, but everything that she is familiar with is starting to go away.

So too are the people. Her husband goes missing, and then her oldest son too. Eilish discovers that she is caught up in the middle of a society that is collapsing, which does not always act rationally. Can she save her family and will she have to sacrifice something in order to get what she wants? Read Prophet Song by Paul Lynch to find out!