Prophet Song

The Booker Prize-winning novel of 2023 is titled a new “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It tells the story of a mother fighting for her family under the threat of totalitarianism within a liberal democracy. A microbiologist named Ailish Stack gets pulled into a nightmare when her husband—an activist in a teachers’ union—disappears after a protest demonstration. Public institutions collapse, the government turns their quiet suburb into a conflict zone, and to save her family, Ailish has to take extreme measures. The novel warns about how easy it is to lose freedoms we take for granted, but its greatest strength is that the events it depicts feel absolutely real.