The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
In a ceremony at the Roundhouse, London, on October 17th, it was announced that Shehan Karunatilaka had won the coveted Booker Prize. Neil MacGregor, Chair of the 2022 judges, said:
‘Any one of the six shortlisted books would have been a worthy winner. What the judges particularly admired and enjoyed in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was the ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques. This is a metaphysical thriller, an afterlife noir that dissolves the boundaries not just of different genres, but of life and death, body and spirit, east and west. It is an entirely serious philosophical romp that takes the reader to ’the world’s dark heart’ — the murderous horrors of civil war Sri Lanka. And once there, the reader also discovers the tenderness and beauty, the love and loyalty, and the pursuit of an ideal that justify every human life.’
Shehan Karunatilaka, Sri Lankan author of Chinaman, returns to the literary limelight ten years later with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, Seven Moons is unlike anything I have ever read before. Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, the novel’s debauched protagonist, Maali, is a gambler, an atheist, a gay man, and a talented war photographer who has borne witness to the atrocities and brutality of Sri Lanka’s multiple insurrections.
At the very start of the novel, a deceased Maali wakes up in what appears to be a government office of the afterlife, and what follows is a sardonic, absurd, and satirical whirlwind of a novel. Readers are catapulted into the world of the lost, disgruntled, and vengeful souls who are held in the ‘in between’ for seven moons. Suspended on the edge of the world he has recently departed, at a time in Sri Lankan history when death squads, suicide bombers, and political division is rife, Maali has seven days to secure his photographic legacy and reach out to those who have loved him throughout his life.
Read our conversation with Shehan Karunatilaka here
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