If great art does anything, it is capturing complex contemporary zeitgeists in accessible representations. The new noir, science-fiction mystery novel, Prophet by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché, is a perfect example of a work establishing such a thing. What do a mug, an American diner, flowers and two boxes of Scrabble have in common? They appeared out of thin air on an American basis overseas, and while real, they are not true… Do you comprehend such distinction?  

Whether its conspiracy Red-Pill thinkers believing in the Illuminati or feminist scholars critiquing Western epistemologies, questions surrounding truth have never been so present – or perhaps not since the secular turn of the enlightenment. Living in a post-truth, post-Trump era, where alternative facts slither through our highly mediated communication, Baudrillard wasn’t far off expecting that the explosion of information would lead to an implosion of meaning. Things don’t have to be true anymore to be real. Deep fakes, fake news, complicated information reduced to fit a three second attention span. Algorithmic bubbles help us to avoid what we a priori disagree with. So, what is truth then in our current simulacra’s sprouting from emotions? Now, obviously, PROPHET is unable to give any real answers to such philosophical problems. But the author’s do offer an immaculate story about truth, trust and meaning.

The novel starts with the convicted drug addicted Sunil Rao, who finds himself instead of his cell, in a cheap Holiday Inn. The former military asset is once again called upon when random objects start to appear out of thin air. Quickly we learn that a certain substance called Prophet is materializing people’s nostalgia into real life objects – or copies – and once reunited with their makers puts them in ghastly coma’s. Why the army wants to work with someone as rude, extravagant and undisciplined like Rao, who’s former employs called him “fucked,” is due to his gift; Rao knows the truth. He’s a living polygraphy, being able to tell of any given statement whether it’s true or false. However, the real but untruthful, objects remain even a mystery to him. As does the agent he is paired with, Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein.

If not being able to truth-tell statements about Adam gives Rao enough reasons to be bothered with him, Adam is also his anti-matter. A private, poker-faced military protégé who folds his clothes every night and which duty is his whole identity. A character being able to always know the truth, sounds contradicting to the genre, yet it’s precisely the reasons for “not being able to know” that propels the story forward. Similarly, it raises questions about trust. If Adam is the only person in the world Rao cannot truth-test, can he trust him? Does he even have a choice? As they slowly unravel the secrets behind the origins of the substance, the men also start to gradually decipher the enigmas of each other’s hearts. 

The antagonistic partnership between the men appears to contradict the dual authorship of Macdonald and Blaché. In an interview with The Washington Post, they talk about their peculiar digital collaboration. The authors became friends through Twitter in 2009, but only met in real life once the book was almost finished. Stuck at home during covid, Macdonald, a historian of science, naturalist and known for her award-winning novel H is for Hawk, asked her twitter-friend Blaché to co-write a new novella as they both were fascinated by the concept of nostalgia. With pieces of prose and hour-long chats on narrative and tropes, both authors took inspiration from fan-fiction and seemingly so, Prophet is in form and production an ohmage to such digital subcultures. Despite Web 2.0’s influence on the book, Prophet seems to have stronger appeal to the cinematic. In The Guardian the authors themselves say they pitched it as a combination of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Similarly, a review by Scotsman says it reminds more of television than literature, and Washington Post reviewer Sophia Nguyen says that it “reads like a Christopher Nolan movie.”  

With its slow burning sci-fi plot and a real-world resonance, involving spatial temporal altering technologies made by shadow companies, Prophet felt indeed to have a Nolanian thematic. As Prophet’s 450 pages are cut up in five parts, and seventy-seven chapters, likewise it seems similar to what David Bordwell defines as Nolan’s aesthetics; the use of fast paste, cross-cutting scenes while still adhering to an embedded story. While the five parts are differentiated on the location of where the storie takes place, the chapters seem to not follow any clear line. Some chapters are only two pages long, others much longer. And the focus of the third-person perspective changes swiftly within those chapters between Adam and Rao.

Additionally, in the first two parts two other story lines are involved; one of a little boy growing up under his father’s Iron-fist and one marked “Before” relating to Adam’s and Rao’s previous mission in Central Asia. As these two timelines tie themselves to the present story and come to an end in part two, from there the plot is interrupted sporadically by chapters exploring phone calls between the supposed antagonists. While I admire a creative form that reflects its thematic, the different timelines and especially the motives behind them make Prophet sometimes hard to follow.  

I can phantom a justification behind the exposition of the young boy and the Before, the former giving insight in the origins of Adam’s stoicism, and the latter exposing what seems to be the source of different quarrels between them. Nevertheless, the phone calls carry rather meek importance to the story, except introducing some people who will be important for the enactment of the finale but play no major role in it themselves.  It seemed to be a cheap tool to inject suspension. Similarly, the quick shifts in the subjective experiences of Adam and Rao within each chapter, at times, worked disengaging. Comprehending both character’s deep and ambivalent feelings is a lot to bear for one mind. Without even mentioning Rao’s reflections on his time Afghanistan, I would say the story knows many spatial temporalities within the reading experience that can be hard to keep up with. 

This inception I similarly encounter within the dialogues. The conversations between Rao and Adam are well written table tennis-like conversations. For every remark, there is a smashing return. A highly entertaining chess game in which they try outsmarting the other, or simply provoke. Nevertheless, intwined with such conversations, the subjective annotations plunge the reader in a rather difficult labyrinth. While trying to find rapprochement, both men keep their cards close to their chest and often attend to the other from their own assumptions. This creates a push and pull between quick-witted, snappy dialogues and nervous, but heartfelt conversations. Written with an emphasis on details – a stylistic choice often seen in fan-fiction – in combination with deep personal reflections, make these conversations at times fleeting. Occasionally arguments appear to be repetitive, other times you are overthrown with details and feelings. However, skipping sentences or reading too quickly, Prophet is not made for. Sentences like “He doesn’t know what he wanted, he knows exactly what he wanted,” or “The unnatural heaviness behind his eyes that doesn’t feel right, feel so right” can easily be misunderstood or, more seriously, misinterpreted. Significant plot points construed within single remarks by the characters, I sometimes (almost) missed. Like when Adam coincides within himself that he is in fact in love with Rao – aha, so he is gay! – or when Rao casually foretells his own death early in the book – hello, spoiler much! 

Perhaps, the novel’s form itself represents the inherent struggle of Rao and Adam to communicate with one another. I wish to say that the hearth of the book lies in the relationship between the two men, but the constant navigation of their ambivalent feelings, hostile attitudes and psychoanalytical renderings of each other made it feel Iike I was running through a maze, instead of enjoying its enigmatism. Their circling around the truth of liking each other made me stop turning my head. For instance, when Roa realizes more seriously he treated Adam poorly: “Rao sees it happens this time … The lightning flash of misery at the endearment. He’s done real damage there, hasn’t he? He had no idea.” While reading this, I huffed, wondering why he couldn’t have figured that out 200 pages earlier?

Whether the two end up together, I will not spoil. But on the negotiation of homosexuality within the story, the authors have surprised me. Prophet navigates nicely around the pitfalls of generic gay storytelling. Neither does it fall into the despair and trauma of being gay, nor does it suppress a subjective sexuality all together. Sure, I personally hoped for at least one steamy scene, but it is a sensible choice of the authors to include none. Yes, both characters care greatly for each other and are gay, yet that didn’t give them any instantaneous reason to hit homerun. That would rather nullify the characters. Because Rao might be an out and proud gay man – giving blowjobs to strangers in bathroom stools – Adam’s sexuality is rather absent. Which is not another story about shame perse – his father did try to send him to a conversion camp – but because Adam barely seems to care that he is gay. Instead, his feelings for Rao are overshadowed by his strong psychological dissonance from emotions (and sex), Rao’s unpredictability – or unlikability – and the inherent difficulty of the collegial relationship. When Rao does find out Adam has been gay all along, this even lessened the potentiality of them reconciling as lovers.

Without losing sight of the enfolding mystery, Prophet’s complexity does harvest in the opportunity for an in-depth and lived account of homosexuality. Producing a story with queer characters that not revolves around (figuring out one’s) sexuality, while still doing it justice and not make it simply “consumerable,” like Love, Simon. It neutralizes, instead of trying to normalize or naturalize queerness. Being able then to recommend a book to a friend without having to state it’s actually a “gay book” is a refreshing occurrence. Offering a representation that perhaps can bridge people’s algorithmic bubble. Something we desperately need with the current rise of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.  

Macdonald and Blaché have written an exciting novel that is hard to put away. Not only because of its plot, but also due to its thematical contents. The novel plays into many current epistemological questions and keeps you wondering till the end. Roa and Adam live and breathe from the page, and their personalities really bloom within the challenges they face, whether it’s being stuck together in a room or military escapades. At the end of the book, you feel you can truly interpret the meaning behind the slight differences between a thousand different smiles, frowns and glances. Constructing a story that perfectly adheres to its mystery science-fiction genre but with a wink to fan-fiction and a refreshing queer twist. 

However, Prophet is not an easy read and can be quite lengthy. Its complexity in form and its heavy interchangeability between dialogues and repetitive, ambivalent feelings, make me wonder if the book tries to do too much in too many pages. A few cuts would do much for the dispersion of the tension within its narrative structure. Perchance, I might even go so far in saying that a re-materialization of Prophet in cinematic form could do it even more justice. With its Nolanian aesthetics, I agree, that Prophet has all the allure for the big screen. Though, till that happens, Prophet makes up for an innovative, nostalgic read that you simply won’t forget.