‘I may write about 2022 Lanka protests in 20 years’

I’m not a journalist. I wait 20 years, look back, make sure anyone who could take offence is dead and then I write.”

Booker Prize-winner Shehan Karunatilaka is unlikely to make the protests of 2022 in Sri Lanka the theme of a book anytime soon. “It’s a self preservation thing. If you’re talking about south Asia, you know what it’s like. If you talk contemporary stuff, it can be quite dangerous,” says Karunatilaka, winner of the Booker Prize 2022 for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which is set in 1990, against the backdrop of Sri Lanka’s civil war. “By the time I get to 2022, it will be 2042.”