Irish author Paul Lynch has won this year's Booker Prize for his fifth novel Prophet Song. 

He was awarded £50,000 (€57,591) and a trophy by previous winner Shehan Karunatilaka at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate, London, last night.

Accepting the award, Mr Lynch said it is “with immense pleasure that I am bringing the Booker back home to Ireland”. 

“This was not an easy book to write,” he said. “The rational part of me believed I was dooming my career by writing this novel, but I had to write the book anyway – we do not have a choice in such matters. 

“My writing has saved me.” 

Mr Lynch thanked his publishers across Europe and the US, as well as his children and “all the children of the world who need our protection”. 

Prophet Song centres around a woman in Dublin as Ireland becomes a fascist state and her husband, a teacher and trade union leader, is arrested by the newly-formed secret police force. 

'Soul-shattering'

Booker Chair of Judges Esi Edugyan said Prophet Song is “soul-shattering and true”, adding that readers “will not soon forget its warnings”. 

Mr Lynch previously described the book as “partly an attempt at radical empathy”. 

“I wanted to deepen the reader’s immersion to such a degree that by the end of the book, they would not just know, but feel this problem for themselves,” he said. 

Born in Limerick and raised in Inishowen, Co Donegal, Mr Lynch has written four other novels, including Grace and Beyond the Sea. 

Booker Prize in Ireland

Mr Lynch is the fifth Irish author to win the Booker Prize, after Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright. 

Dublin author Paul Murray was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel The Bee Sting, a dark comedy about a wealthy family following the 2008 financial crash. 

Booker said The Bee Sting “brilliantly explores how our secrets and self-deceptions ultimately catch up with us”. 

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry and How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney also made it onto the longlist for the Booker Prize.