Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has gained the Booker Prize for his second novel The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida.
Karunatilaka was introduced with a trophy by Queen Consort Camilla on Monday on the literary award’s first in-person ceremony since 2019.
The prize additionally contains £50,000.
The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida is a novel set in 1990, throughout Sri Lanka’s civil struggle, when the principle character Maali Almeida wakes up useless with no thought who has killed him.
The homosexual struggle photographer and gambler has “seven moons” to contact the person and lady he loves most and cause them to a hidden cache of pictures that may shock the nation.
In his acceptance speech on Monday, Karunatilaka mentioned: “My hope for Seven Moons is that in the not too distant future… it is read in a Sri Lanka that has understood that these ideas of corruption, race baiting and cronyism have not worked and will never work.
“I hope it’s learn in a Sri Lanka that learns from its tales and that Seven Moons can be within the fantasy part of the bookshop and can… not be mistaken for realism or political satire.”
Judges chair Neil MacGregor mentioned: “This is a metaphysical thriller, an afterlife noir that dissolves the boundaries not just of different genres, but of life and death, body and spirit, east and west.
“It is a wholly critical philosophical romp that takes the reader to ‘the world’s darkish coronary heart’ – the murderous horrors of civil struggle Sri Lanka.
“And once there, the reader also discovers the tenderness and beauty, the love and loyalty, and the pursuit of an ideal that justify every human life.”
Karunatilaka grew up in Colombo and this 12 months was the primary time he was shortlisted for the award.
His 2011 debut e-book, Chinaman, gained the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSL and the Gratiaen Prize.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker is open to writers around the globe so long as their work is written in English and printed within the UK or Ireland.
Others on this 12 months’s shortlist included British writer Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker; Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory; Small Things Like These by Irish author Claire Keegan; US writer Percival Everett’s The Trees; and Oh William! by US writer Elizabeth Strout.
Source: information.sky.com”
