He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali.

In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. Maali Almeida-war photographer, gambler, and closet queen-has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. Charlie Connelly, New European ReviewĪ searing satire set amid the mayhem of the Sri Lankan civil war.Ĭolombo, 1990. Amid the dryness, satire and weary lamentations on the state of Sri Lanka there is genuine heart to this novel. The most significant work of Sri Lankan fiction in a decade. And as the narrative gathers pace it becomes a whodunnit. But it also gives you a thorough grounding in Sri Lankan politics. With ghosts and spirits in the afterlife, it is part supernatural. Karunatilaka has done artistic justice to a terrible period in his country’s history. But the novel also recalls the mordant wit and surrealism of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls or Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. The obvious literary comparisons are with the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. James Walton, Times (UK)Ī mix of mischievous magic realism and absurdist humour.

The result is an unexpectedly exhilarating read. Karunatilaka respects the conventions of all the genres that he piles up so extravagantly. There can’t be many novels that simultaneously bring to mind Agatha Christie, Salman Rushdie, Raymond Chandler, John le Carré and Stranger Things-but this one does. Karunatilaka’s novel never courts despair. Comic, macabre, angry and thumpingly alive.

The seven moons of maali almeida signed