When Shehan Karunatilaka woke in his hotel this morning after winning the Booker prize – becoming the first Sri Lankan novelist to do so since Michael Ondaatje won for The English Patient in 1992 – he had more than 300 unread WhatsApp messages, but also tweets from Sri Lanka’s president, the leader of the opposition and other politicians congratulating him. These were met by a furious response from Sri Lankans, who “piled back on them saying: ‘Stay away from this guy. He’s writing about YOU,’” Karunatilaka paraphrases when we talk a little later that morning.
A spirited magical-realist epic, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is set in 1989 during the Sri Lankan civil war. Narrated in the second person, it follows Maali Almeida, “photographer, gambler, slut”, not to mention ghost, who has seven days to find out who killed him, and lead his two best friends to a stash of photographs that will show the world what is really happening in Sri Lanka. As Almeida explains in a handy crib sheet of his nation’s warring factions: “Don’t try and look for the good guys ’cos there ain’t none.”
