The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

"Winner"

"The Booker Prize is the UK’s most prestigious literary award, bringing with it a prize pot of £50,000 and (almost invariably) a huge boost in sales. The winner of the 2022 Booker Prize was Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida . I spoke to the chair of the judging panel, Neil Macgregor, back in September when he described it thus: “The hero of this book is already dead. In the afterlife, he’s given a chance to revisit moments and places from his life, which took place during the Sri Lankan Civil War, in which the hero—who was a photographer—was ultimately killed. It’s a fantasy of a dead figure coming back, revisiting and understanding what happened, and also watching what the significance of their own life was.” Its sister prize, the International Booker Prize, seeks to award the best fiction translated into English over the previous year. It’s always, always worth paying attention to, because the shortlists highlight so many wonderful books from around the world that we might otherwise not come into contact with. I almost always discover my favourite books of the year via these shortlists. The winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize was Tomb of Sand, a novel by Geetanjali Shree, as translated by Daisy Rockwell. The chair of the judges Frank Wynne, a noted translator in his own right (see below), told me in June that this book was “an extraordinary piece of fiction, [and] also an extraordinary piece of metafiction” of Indian partition."

"Set in during the Sri Lankan Civil War, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida —which won the Booker Prize in 2022—follows a war photographer as he pieces back together the story of his life and death. As Neil MacGregor, the art historian and chair of the 2022 judging panel, told me : “It’s a fantasy of a dead figure coming back, revisiting and understanding what happened, and also watching what the significance of their own life was. So at one level, it’s an enormous subject, almost a theological issue—what did this person do with their life? what does it add up to?—but it’s done with enormous humour.” There are moments, MacGregor explained, “of real horror”, when the brutality of the conflict are laid bare. But also “wild humour”. “It’s an attempt to draw up a balance sheet to write an account of a life, but in this wonderfully fantastical, hilarious, spine-chilling way.”"

"Yes. The hero of this book is already dead. In the afterlife, he’s given a chance to revisit moments and places from his life, which took place during the Sri Lankan Civil War, in which the hero—who was a photographer—was ultimately killed. It’s a fantasy of a dead figure coming back, revisiting and understanding what happened, and also watching what the significance of their own life was. So at one level, it’s an enormous subject, almost a theological issue—what did this person do with their life? what does it add up to?—but it’s done, again, with enormous humour. The hero of the book is addressed as ‘you’, which engages the reader in a very interesting way. Rather like Everett’s book, there are moments of real horror in this, when you realise what brutal interracial murderous hostilities lead to, and also wild humour. At the end, you’re left with a view of what a life has achieved, because the man’s photographs document what happened in the civil war. So it’s an attempt to draw up a balance sheet to write an account of a life, but in this wonderfully fantastical, hilarious, spine-chilling way. “The device of an afterlife ghost story allows an outsider to engage emotionally” As with The Trees , as with Glory , you’re aware that all this is real, it has been happening in our lifetime—recently. People have been murdered like this, killed like this. And somehow, we have to sort out what all this means. This is our world. How do we engage with it? As with Everett’s humour, as with Bulawayo’s fabular fantasy, here in Sri Lanka the device of an afterlife ghost story allows an outsider to engage emotionally and to start thinking: What is this really about? What does it mean? Four of these books are about long histories of brutal, cruel injustice. The average British reader knows about all of them through reporting. But fiction enables us to live for a time in that world, and to realise something of what it must mean to live in those circumstances, in a way that I don’t think even the best reporting allows. It’s a parallel mode of informing and engaging, isn’t it?"

"Set in 1990 Colombo, Sri Lanka, Shehan Karunatilaka’s Booker Prize-winning novel is everything all at once: magical realism, satire, political fiction and thriller. It’s also bold storytelling from a Sri Lankan author for how it includes everything – colonialism, ethnic identity, politics, religion – that factored into the country’s civil war and its aftermath. Shady and brash photojournalist Maali Almeida is dead and in a limbo state. He has seven moons to deal with unfinished business before he can move on. He (re)encounters mythical and folkloric characters, war victims, friends and enemies. Karunatilaka’s irreverent humor keeps the pace breezy and the mood whimsical, but this novel holds nothing back."