More political leaders should read Prophet Song: Sturgeon

Scotland’s former first minister was interviewing author Paul Lynch.

Nicola Sturgeon is known as an avid reader (Jane Barlow/PA) (PA Archive)

Nicola Sturgeon has said she wishes more UK political leaders would read Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning novel Prophet Song.

Ms Sturgeon, a former Scottish first minister, also said she wishes that more political leaders read fiction “as a general principle”.

Prophet Song tells the story of a mother of four working as a scientist whose husband is taken away by the newly formed Irish secret police and her struggle to keep her family together under a tyrannical government.

Discussing the book with the Irish author at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Ms Sturgeon touched on how one of the characters in the book gets in a boat, and said the novel should in some ways act as a “wake-up call to all of us”.

Scotland’s former first minister said: “She lives a life that all of us in this country can recognise, and therefore what happens to her suddenly doesn’t seem far away. It’s something we can conceive of and imagine.”

Ms Sturgeon added: “She gets in a boat. And yet, so much of the discourse in this country is inhumane about people who take boats to come here, and is fuelling something really, you know, horrific in parts of this country.

“So, you know, in some ways, you know, this is a book I would love political leaders in certain other parts of the UK to read and to understand.

“I wish more political leaders read fiction, by the way, just as a general principle.”

Lynch said that the “Trojan horse of this book is it’s taken what you think is the other, and it’s made them you”.

Ms Sturgeon, whose love of books is well known, was interviewing Lynch at the book festival on Sunday.

She asked the author why he does not explain in the book how it came to be that Ireland suddenly found itself “in the grip of fascism”.

I want the mythic aspects of this book to be what you take away

Author Paul Lynch

He said that we do not know when the book is set and it “may well be counterfactual”.

Commenting on why he did not put the politics up front, Lynch said it was “because I want the mythic aspects of this book to be what you take away”.

He said: “This book is about what has been, what will be, and what continues to be, because there is a wretchedness built into the human condition that we cannot get rid of and war is what we are, and that’s what this book is about.”

Prophet Song is Lynch’s fifth novel and won him the 2023 Booker Prize.