Features
Quotes, Comments on the 2022 Booker Prize winner and Book
Reams have already been written about Shehan Karunatillaka and his Booker Prize winning
In his address, speaking in English, Sinhala and Tamil (another praiseworthy gesture), he spoke pointedly about the troubles and crises the country is going through even now. But he said, troubles do not go on forever; thus giving us all hope for a better future, immediate, we fervently hope. The title is because the dead photographer is given seven moons (seven months?) to find out how, why and who did him in.
Quotes
I will quote from Alexander Alter’s article about the prize of October 17, published in the New York Times. Neil MacGregor, Chair of the panel of judges and ex Director of the British Museum, said their choice of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was unanimous, it beating five other remarkable books: one on the fall of Mugabe, another on the travails of mothers and a third touching on racial bias and violence in the US based on a long ago lynching.
MacGregor further said Shehan “examines the trauma of the country’s decades long civil war. The judges admired enormously the ambition and the scope as also the skill, the daring audacity and the hilarity of the execution” of the author. He commented on the “variety of registers it was deploying, the skill with which language was used and the confidence with which it shifted gears from noir to philosophical reflections to comedy.”
“It’s a book that takes the reader on a roller coaster journey through life and death.” Also, “a journey at once horrific and beyond death, to the world’s dark heart. There astonishingly and encouragingly, we find tenderness, laughter, loyalty and love “concluded MacGregor in his address to the vast audience at the awards ceremony on October 17 in the Roundhouse in London. Shehan captured the real nature and characteristics of the ordinary Sri Lankan.
About the theme of The Seven Moons… Alexander Alter notes: “So when he had the idea for a novel about a Sri Lankan war photographer, who wakes up dead, in an underworld populated by victims of political violence, he conjured up what felt like the most realistic version of the afterlife: a tedious, dysfunction bureaucracy, where hordes of confused ghosts are waiting to be processed.” The photographer was a heavy drinking man and ‘closet queen’. His underworld was also described as a visa centre filled with motley characters.
The Author
Shehan, born in Galle in 1975, experienced as a boy effects of the civil war, admitting now that the full impact was lost on him. He realized all this when researching the past, mostly for his novel on cricket. Alter’s article in the NYT says: “As a boy living through Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 1980s, Shehan thought of political violence as part of the landscape. War was a constant backdrop to daily life, more mundane than frightening at times.”
His father, a surgeon, decided to move the family to Colombo and Shehan schooled at S. Thomas’, Mt Lavinia. Crazy on cricket and probably in a team, he protested strongly on going to New Zealand when his parents decided to move to a greener pasture. (This was told me by a relative). He continued his schooling there and then moved to advertising in London and Singapore.In an address to the Book Show, Shehan said it was “the darkest time in our history.”
Maybe, as most of us surmise, present times are the very worst, the very darkest, with the entire island affected and crises brought on by government, unlike the war started and carried out by the LTTE under one man.His earlier novel – Chinaman: the legend of Pradeep Mathew winning the DSC Prize for writers in South Asia and the International Booker Prize was also about a journalist – drunken etc – who goes in search of a past cricketer, revealing the corruption in Sri Lankan cricket.
In Shehan’s address at the awards ceremony he was outspoken, unafraid and told some truths about the country. “I was going to read the names of all the journalists, the activists, the politicians, the civilians who have been murdered by the State, or by those opposing it, in my lifetime in Sri Lanka. But if I had done that, we’d be here all night.” Stark truth with humour attached, however, humour of the dark kind.
He has also said “My hope for The Seven Moons … is that in the not too distant future – 10 years or as long as it takes – that it is read – a Sri Lanka that learns from its stories, and that The Seven Moons… will be on the fantasy section of the bookshop – next to dragons, unicorns – and will not be mistaken for realism or political satire.” We comment we hope your frankness in speech and truths behind your satirical writing will further wake people up to what they have tolerated for so long, and will make them demand and bring change to political systems.He added at the Book Show: “I think as Sri Lankans it is better to laugh than to cry and if you do not laugh, that’s what you end up doing.” “You know Sri Lanka is a grim place most of the time, but it’s not a sad, depressing place because we tend to appreciate absurdity and the humour of it.”
You’ve diagnosed your countrymen correctly, Shehan. In all our troubles, we tend to grab some happiness, bits of joy and conviviality. We thank you for your speeches which revealed some truths, at least, about the country. You spoke about corruption, cronyism as against true democracy our politicos profess we enjoy.
Shehan was interested in ghosts and researched. Then came the idea in around 2011 to write a satirical novel about war travails that afflicted Sri Lanka. The idea crystallized around 2014. It emerged as Chat with the Dead. Edited it appeared as Seven Moons of… The most recent publication was on August 4, 2022, after the long listing we suppose, by the independent London publisher Sort of Books. It will be published in the US by W W Norton Phoning Nuwan at Vijita Yapa bookshop on Thurstan Road, I found that previous stocks – all sold out – were priced at 2,900/- per copy. A new batch is expected next week and will be less that Rs 2,000/- I was offered to read a copy downloaded to his kindle by a friend. I prefer holding a real book and reading it.