Shehan Karunatilaka
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)The winner of this year’s Booker Prize has admitted that he “self-censored” his work after the knife attack on Sir Salman Rushdie made him fear for his family’s safety.
Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the £50,000 fiction prize last night for his novel The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida, spoke about his reaction to the stabbing of Sir Salman in August. Karunatilaka said he had been in the process of publishing a collection of short stories when he heard of the attack in New York state.
He added: “I discarded a couple of short stories, which I don’t think were offensive to any religion but my wife said, ‘Yeah, can you not do that? You’ve got two young kids? This story isn’t that good. Just leave it out’. In the balance of it, I thought... a short story, I can easily take it out.
“So I have self-censored and things like that, and it is a concern when you’re writing semi-political stuff in a place like Sri Lanka — who are you going to offend and is it really going to cost you more than you anticipated?”
Karunatilaka’s winning novel tells the story of the photographer of its title, who in 1990 wakes up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. With no idea who killed him, Maali has seven moons to contact the people he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos of civil war atrocities.
It was turned down by major publishers before being picked up by a tiny independent press — Sort Of Books — based in North London and run by husband-and-wife team Mark Ellingham and Natania Jansz.
Mr Ellingham said the win was “a life-changing event” for Karunatilaka and would also change their business. He added: “It’s wonderful for us, we may be offered the odd book from an agent that we wouldn’t have been offered otherwise.”
He said they only took it on the book after a series of “wonderfully random” events having missed out on the chance to publish Karunatilaka’s debut, adding: “He sent us this draft. My wife read it and said it needs a bit of work but we can do it together, so we went on a bizarre journey by Zoom during lockdown.”
