The 2022 Booker Prize was given to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, written by Sri Lanka's Shehan Karunatilaka. The annual award, which was given Monday evening in London, is for a work of fiction written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland.
The panel of judges hailed Karunatilaka's novel as "a searing, mordantly funny satire set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war."
Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him.
At a time where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.
Ten years after his prizewinning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka's foremost authors, Karunatilaka is back with a rip-roaring epic, full of mordant wit and disturbing truths.
Shehan Karunatilaka
2022
Sort Of Books