Sri Lankan author wins Booker Prize for ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’
Shehan Karunatilaka, author of 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida', who has won the Booker Prize 2022, at the winner ceremony at the Roundhouse in London. Picture: David Parry/PA Wire.
Shehan Karunatilaka has won this year’s Booker Prize for their novel .
This evening, Shehan Karunatilaka was presented with the original 1969 Booker Prize trophy, which has been reinstated in memory of its creator, the beloved children’s author and illustrator Jan Pieńkowski, who died in February this year.
The writer was praised by judges for the “scope and the skill, the daring, the audacity and hilarity” of his second novel.
The book, published by the independent press Sort of Books, is a darkly comic murder mystery set in Colombo in 1990 during the Sri Lankan Civil War.
It follows Maali Almeida, a war photographer, gambler, and closeted homosexual as he tries to find out who killed him in seven moons.
Karunatilaka, who was born in Galle and grew up in Colombo, has said that Sri Lankans “specialise in gallows humour and make jokes in the face of crises”.
“It’s our coping mechanism,” he said.
"To make any longlist requires luck … to have a novel about Sri Lanka’s chaotic past come out just when the world is watching Sri Lanka’s chaotic present also requires an alignment of dark forces.
“Unlike my protagonist Maali Almeida, I don’t gamble. So I don’t expect to roll two more sixes, though I will scream with joy if I do.”
Last year's winner, South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut presented Karunatilaka with the £50,000 prize money.
Wexford writer Claire Keegan had made the shortlist with her book . The 116-page novel was the shortest work to ever be featured on the prize’s longlist.
The judges described Keegan’s Faber-published novel as a story of “quiet bravery, set in an Irish community in denial of its central secret”, with “beautiful, clear, economic writing and an elegant structure, dense with moral themes".
Previous Irish winners have included Anna Burns for (2018), and Anne Enright for in 2007.
Also on the shortlist this year was by Alan Garner, the oldest author ever to be shortlisted for The Booker Prize. He celebrated his 88th birthday on Monday.
Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of , was nominated for which the judges said was “one of those quietly radiant books that finds the deepest mysteries in the simplest things”.
by NoViolet Bulawayo and by Percival Everett also made the shortlist.
The first fully in-person ceremony since 2019 brought together Booker Prize writers past and present with a diverse range of readers, including Camilla Parker Bowles and pop singer Dua Lipa.
The evening was hosted by comedian Sophie Duker, with filmed extracts from the shortlisted books, featuring the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Anna Friel, and Sharon Horgan.
