Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

This won the Booker Prize and while it wasn't my favorite of the long listed books (I still have three left to read, but of all of the ones I have, The Bee Sting is my pick for the top prize), this is really quite good. It is yet another horrifying look into what the near future could look like. Since we already have had Catch-22 in the United States, and are quickly devolving into The Handmaid's Tale, neither of which I thought were plausible when I read them as a young adult and now seem all too real, so I no longer dismiss anything as too far fetched. Eilish Stack is a respected microbiologist, a mother and the wife of a union leader. After a long day of work, she craves only a spot of peace and renewal. Spoiler alert--it doesn't come--instead there is a knocking on the door and two plainclothes men who ask Eilish about her husband, Larry, are polite and solicitous. Since the Emergency Powers Act was passed, the whole country has been thrumming with anxiety. But Larry imagines that his work with the teachers union can’t possibly be labeled seditious. “There are still constitutional rights in this country,” he insists. And yet the next labor demonstration is violently broken up by police. Larry is detained without access to counsel or visitors — and then he’s disappeared. And so it goes, in an entirely believable way. This is not to be missed.