The Embassy of Ireland in Seoul will host Booker Prize-winning novelist Paul Lynch and short-story writer Danielle McLaughlin in September, marking Lynch's first visit to Korea, the embassy said. Lynch, author of "Prophet Song," which won the 2023 Booker Prize — Britain's leading literary award for English-language fiction — will hold a public conversation with readers on Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. at Daesan Hall in Seoul's Gwanghwamun area. The talk, titled "Imagination That Awakens Reality," will explore how literature reflects real-world events and how imagination can offer new ways of understanding the present. "Prophet Song" follows an ordinary family in a fictional Ireland gripped by totalitarian rule, using their experience to examine the spread of authoritarianism, loss of freedom, displacement and human dignity. The novel won international acclaim for its realism and dystopian imagination, alongside the 2023 Booker Prize and the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. McLaughlin, author of the short-story collection "Dinosaurs on Other Planets," will give a lecture and creative-writing wo