Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka wins 2022 Booker Prize

Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the 2022 Booker Prize for his second novel ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’. Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world.

47-year-old Karunatilaka, becomes the second Sri Lankan to win the prestigious 50,000 pounds literary prize at a ceremony in London on Monday night, after Michael Ondaatje who won for ‘The English Patient’ in 1992.

‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ tells the story of the photographer of its title, who in 1990 wakes up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office.

With no idea who killed him, Maali has seven moons to contact the people he loves most and leads them to a hidden cache of photos of civil war atrocities that will rock Sri



Lanka.

Chair of the 2022 Booker judges Neil MacGregor said, the judges particularly admired and enjoyed in ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ the ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques.

The novel has been described by judges as a whodunnit and a race against time, full of ghosts, gags, and deep humanity.

Shehan Karunatilaka, who was born in Galle in 1975 and grew up in Colombo, says that Sri Lankans specialise in "gallows humour" and make jokes in the face of crises as a coping mechanism. His debut novel from 2011, ‘Chinaman’, had won the Commonwealth Prize.

The Booker Prize is awarded annually to a book published in English in the United Kingdom and Ireland.