Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka's second novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was announced the winner of the prestigious Booker Prize on Monday.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker is recognised as the leading prize for quality literary fiction written in English.
Karunatilaka’s novel is a supernatural satire set during the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Chair of the 2022 judging panel, Neil MacGregor, said: “Any one of the six shortlisted books would have been a worthy winner. What the judges particularly admired and enjoyed in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was the ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques.
“This is a metaphysical thriller, an afterlife noir that dissolves the boundaries not just of different genres, but of life and death, body and spirit, east and west. It is an entirely serious philosophical romp that takes the reader to ‘the world’s dark heart’ — the murderous horrors of civil war Sri Lanka. And once there, the reader also discovers the tenderness and beauty, the love and loyalty, and the pursuit of an ideal that justifies every human life.”
An extract from the first section of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida can be read here.
Damon Galgut won last year's prize for The Promise, an accolade which marked the third time a South African novelist has received the award after Nadine Gordimer’s joint-win for The Conservationist (1974) and JM Coetzee’s double-win (a first in Booker history) for Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999).
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