Booker prize 2022 winner: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida | SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA | Hamish Hamilton | 400 pages | ₹ 599

Shehan Karunatilaka is the second successive author from Sri Lanka (after Anuk Arudpragasam last year) to make it to the Booker shortlist, proving that some of the finest novels from the subcontinent are emerging from the island country, and being published in India. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was first published as Chats with the Dead in India in 2020. In the subcontinent Karuna­tilaka is well known, as his debut novel Chinaman won many an award in 2011. The Seven Moons… works on an outlandish premise, Maali Almeida, a war photographer, a gambler, a man with boyfriends and girlfriends, now dwelling in the liminal space between this life and the afterlife, must solve his own murder. He also needs to contact his loved ones so that they can locate a hidden trove of photos that will rock Sri Lanka. Almeida has no idea who killed him, and in a country where kill­ings are all too common, the list is not short. Almeida has photos of a civilian village that was allegedly forcibly combat trained by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and various factions cannot wait to get their hands on it.

The novel is an absurd whodunit, which succeeds at being light and dark, serious and hilarious all at the same time. Early in the novel we encounter a lexicon for Sri Lankan abbreviations that hint at what the novel might be about, the IPKF (Indian Peace Keep­ing Force) is described as “sent by our neighbours to preserve peace and are willing to burn villages and gang-rape to fulfil their mission.”

With Sri Lanka back in the news, for all of the wrong reasons, Karunatilaka’s novel, though set during the civil war of the 1990s, seems oddly resonant today.

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2022Booker PrizeLTTEShehan KarunatilakaSri LankaThe Seven Moons of Maali Almeida