Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka’s second novel is 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 to be a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time when scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long.

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. 

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was announced as the winner of the Booker Prize 2022 on October 17 at a ceremony in London.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Alyssa C Smith

Evil is not what we should fear. Creatures with power acting in their own interest: that is what should make us shudder.

Lindsay

Victoria Justice

Jemima Scott

‘All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair. Many get luck, and many get misery. Many are born to homes with books, many grow up in the swamps of war. In the end, all becomes dust. All stories conclude with a fade to black.’

‘The girl is playing with fire, thinking it is candyfloss.’

The beauty of studying the odds is knowing which cards are worth betting on. And knowing that freak occurrences happen every day while no one watches. You can shuffle a pack this minute and deal a sequence that has never occurred in the history of all humanity. By your estimation, you have mode chance of dying in a bomb blast in cosmopolitan Colombo than in the deepest darkest Jaffna. Because, at least in the war zone, you knew which direction the bombs were flying and who was dropping them.

The Afterlife is as confusing as the Before Death, the In Between is as arbitrary as the Down There. So we make up stories because we're afraid of the dark.

The rain spits out lighting and the thunder breaks wind. You've lost count how many times it has rained since your untimely demise. Either the monsoons have come early or the universe is shedding tears for you and your silly little life. Today, the tears fall think as globs of ink, diving from angry clouds into the heads of the meek.

Everything in the afterlife seeks to come with a radius and a barricade.

You know why the battle of good vs. evil is so one-sided, Malin? Because evil is better organized, better equipped, and better paid.

Humans believe they make their own thoughts and posses their own will. This is yet another placebo that we swallow after birth. Thoughts are whispers that come from without as well as within. They can no more be controlled than the wind. Whispers will blow across your mind at all times and you will succumb to more of them than you think.

Do animals get an afterlife? Or is their punishment to be reborn as human?

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida quotes

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