Set against the backdrop of the conflict-ridden Sri Lanka of the 1990s, it refers to several historical and political events of the period. The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida, winner of the 2022 Booker, is also the tale of a quest. Using the island’s cricket culture as a prism, Chinaman provided an insightful portrait of Sri Lankan society. It told the tale of an alcoholic retired sports journalist’s efforts to track down a talented left-arm spinner of the 1980s who disappeared from the cricketing scene without a trace. Ten years ago, his sparkling debut, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, won a slew of prestigious awards – the Commonwealth Prize, the DSC Prize, the Gratiaen Prize – and was adjudged second among the best cricket novels ever written by Wisden. This underworld forms a parallel universe in Shehan Karunatilaka’s second novel, The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida. According to estimates, the dead numbered around one lakh – making it a place overpopulated with troubled spirits. From 1983 to 2009, the island nation saw a bitter civil war. Clarke, the sci-fi author who made Sri Lanka his home for several decades. ‘Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living,’ wrote Arthur C.
0 kommentar(er)
