RaveThe Observer (UK)\"If there was ever a crucial book for our current times, it’s Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song ... The book is also reminiscent of Anna Burns’s Milkman in that it’s an important story aching to be told, heavy with the reality it bears. While Burns wrote of sexual harassment, Lynch’s dystopian Ireland reflects the reality of war-torn countries, where refugees take to the sea to escape persecution on land. Prophet Song echoes the violence in Palestine, Ukraine and Syria, and the experience of all those who flee from war-torn countries. This is a story of bloodshed and heartache that strikes at the core of the inhumanity of western politicians’ responses to the refugee crisis ... Lynch’s message is crystal clear: lives the world over are experiencing upheaval, violence, persecution. Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.\
Kate Atkinson
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)The 11 short stories in this collection each weave together, playful in their intertextuality as they nod to other stories in the collection and beyond ... have rarely ever picked up a book again for a second go. But when I read the last page of Normal Rules Don’t Apply I had an intense desire to flick back to the beginning and start again.
