Image in the original: At the Embassy of Ireland, Tokyo.
Last month, I attended an event at the Irish Embassy in Tokyo featuring Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song.
Paul Lynch, born in 1977, debuted as a novelist in 2013. Today, Prophet Song has been translated into more than forty languages and has become one of the defining political novels of recent years.
The evening consisted of a conversation with Japanese translator and Irish literature scholar Nobuaki Tochigi, readings from the novel, and audience questions.
What struck me most was not simply the discussion of authoritarianism or politics.
It was Paul’s view of what literature itself is supposed to do.
This is not a novel about the future
Prophet Song is often described as a dystopian novel.
Paul acknowledged this, but he also seemed slightly resistant to the label.
He said he sees the novel primarily as a book about spiritual connection.
Of course, once a novel is published, it belongs to readers. Some British readers, he noted, connect it to Orwell’s 1984. But Paul insisted that the events inside the novel are not abstract speculation.
They are already happening.
That distinction matters.
The terror in Prophet Song does not emerge suddenly. It begins inside ordinary domestic life. A government changes gradually. People adapt incrementally. Fear enters through normalization.
By the time people realize what is happening, the old world is already gone.
Paul explained that beginning with his third novel, he shifted from writing in the past tense to the present tense because he wanted readers to confront events as something unfolding now.
Not history.
Presence.
Literature should deepen uncertainty
One of the most fascinating parts of the evening was Lynch’s discussion of Keats’ idea of “Negative Capability.”
The phrase refers to the ability to remain inside uncertainty without rushing toward answers or conclusions.
Paul repeatedly emphasized that literature should not function like politics.
Politicians promise solutions.
Literature asks questions.
He referenced Chekhov’s idea that the role of the writer is not to solve problems, but to formulate them correctly.
That feels increasingly radical today.
Modern culture constantly pressures us toward instant certainty.
Social media rewards clarity, speed, and confident judgment.
Everything must immediately become a position.
But literature operates differently.
It resists closure.
It prolongs ambiguity.
It forces readers to remain inside complexity.
Paul even said that fiction should increase uncertainty.
I found that deeply refreshing.
Radical empathy
Another phrase he used repeatedly was “radical empathy.”
Not pity.
Not moral signaling.
Something far more difficult.
The novel, Paul suggested, allows us to inhabit another person’s reality from the inside. To experience another consciousness emotionally rather than intellectually.
He described the novel as a kind of container — a vessel readers enter into.
Inside it, we do not merely observe suffering. We live beside it.
This is why Prophet Song feels so unsettling.
Its protagonist is not a heroic revolutionary. She is a mother of four children trying to protect her family while society collapses around her.
Paul connected this structure to Greek myth and The Iliad.
Myth, he suggested, is not only about heroes. There are also unnamed sailors, mothers, children — ordinary people caught inside history.
That may be one of the reasons the novel feels simultaneously ancient and contemporary.
Looking into the abyss
One audience member asked about the mortuary scene in Prophet Song, which many readers apparently tell Paul they can never forget.
He explained that it took him months to write during the pandemic. Eventually he had to leave his family, isolate himself in a small cabin, and finish the scene alone.
Then he said something I have not stopped thinking about:
If you look into the abyss, responsibility comes with it.
Do not look away, he said.
Readers, he believes, are grateful when writers refuse to turn away from truth.
That may be one of literature’s final moral responsibilities.
Reading muscle
Paul also spoke briefly about teaching younger students.
He said many people today have lost what he called “reading muscle.”
The phrase felt painfully accurate.
The ability to sustain attention.
To tolerate complexity.
To continue reading without immediate resolution.
Like physical strength, this too weakens when unused.
Social media trains us toward reaction, compression, and instant comprehension. Literature asks the opposite of us.
Patience.
Attention.
Tolerance for ambiguity.
In that sense, reading may now be a countercultural act.
“That is the greatest wisdom.”
At the end of the evening, I was able to briefly speak with Paul during the signing session.
I told him how deeply affected I had been by a line he quoted during his Booker Prize acceptance speech:
“If you don’t bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you. If you do, it may save you.”
He paused quietly and replied:
“I think that is the greatest wisdom.”
Then he thanked me for remembering it.
At that moment, the entire evening suddenly came together for me.
Literature is not merely entertainment.
Nor is it ideology.
It is a way of confronting uncertainty, entering other lives, looking into darkness without turning away, and refusing to betray what exists inside oneself.
Perhaps that is why people continue to write novels.
Not because literature saves the world.
But because refusing to bring forth what is within you may destroy the person who refuses to speak. ■
Reference:
Paul Lynch wins the Booker Prize 2023 for ‘Prophet Song’ | The Booker Prize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA-91yS62ZM
First published on Substack on Jun 3, 2026 (JST). Archived here as part of the Fabio Caipirinha permanent archive (published on this site: Oct 15, 2026). Images from the original are omitted here pending rights clearance. Original: https://fabiocaipirinha.substack.com/p/if-you-dont-bring-forth-what-is-within
Cover image: Grattan Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin (CC0, Wikimedia Commons — source)
