The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

I'm usually not one to read award winning books, especially something like a Booker Prize because they mostly tend to be literary fiction and that's not a genre I'm frequently looking for. But when the news of this book winning the award came about and I realized that it's both South Asian and speculative fiction, I knew I had to give it a try. And it also felt like a big oversight on my part that I purport to support Asian/South Asian authors and books on my blog but I truly don't remember reading anything set in Sri Lanka except a couple of short stories last year. When I finally got the audiobook from my library yesterday, I just didn't wanna wait anymore and gobbled up the whole thing in just a few hours.

I truly don't have words to describe what kind of a book this is. It's totally political because it's set in the 80s with various political factions like the government and the JVP, as well as liberation movements like the LTTE - each committing horrific violence on the other side, and no one more so than the ruling party - but it's also supernatural with the main character being dead at the beginning and his soul (or ghost maybe) trying to figure out his afterlife (and in between); as well as a murder mystery because our ghost doesn't remember how he died.

The story might start with ghosts and afterlife but it is so rooted in its Sri Lankan setting that you can't help but feel like you are wandering those streets with our main character, watching that horrific violence unfold in front of your eyes, and wonder what even is the point of it all. At the same time, we also get some spectacular supernatural world building, with its inspirations from Hinduism and Buddhism, making it seem both familiar and new to me - so many different creatures with their own functions, many souls who haven't gotten over the violence of their deaths, and the souls deciding between doing something about the injustice or forgetting it all and moving on into the Light. It's all a mix of fascinating concepts to read about and the author's satirical writing style makes it all very engaging even when we can see that the situation is all bleak.

Our main character Maali is a gay man in a country in strife who won't agree to either call himself a queer person and at the same time won't agree that the situation in his homeland is hopeless. He is a photographer who has captured many horrific scenes, even at the behest of those committing the violence and using his pictures as propaganda, but he still believes that someday his photos will lead to a reckoning. It almost feels like his naïveté that such a thing is possible but when he tries hard to make his work known even from the other side of death, we are very much inclined to root for him. Through his endeavors, we get to meet the people in his life who have had significant impacts on him but whom he probably didn't appreciate enough when alive. We also meet the many souls with their own grievances along with him, as he traverses his new reality. And along with it all, we also kind of get a mystery, with Maali trying his best to reminisce his last moments and piece together the truth of his death and the ones responsible, which when revealed did come as a shock to me.

Overall, I can just say that I was left marveling at the author's genius both while reading and at the end. This is a book that packs a punch and takes a quite no holds barred approach to showcasing political violence, but is also funny and whimsical and sad and everything in between. The audiobook narrator Shivantha Wijesinha did a spectacular job with his voice and bringing this world to life and I'm just so glad I got to experience this book through his narration. I can't pinpoint who will exactly appreciate this book but if you are someone who love inventive speculative fiction/ magical realism with a very realistic political setting, then this will be a great choice for you.

This was a very challenging first half. I am not sure why the first half was so dense compared to the first but half way through the plot resolution and pace really picked up. The first half took me the better part of a week, the second half took me an afternoon.

I appreciated all the backstory around the Sri Lankan civil war. It's a country/time period I knew nothing about.

The characterization is very good in this book but I also think this book suffers from having too many characters. May just be my personal preference.

This book reads very acerbic. For having an extremely dark, graphically violent backdrop, there are some gallows humor moments.

What a brilliant book! Went into this, not knowing anything about SriLankan politics or the wars. The plot, with the heaven and afterlife and wandering souls and demons and protests and raw real people doing real people things, was refreshing. Absolutely a great book with a unique story to start the year with, I remember gushing about the story to anyone who would listen.

“The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” is a novel by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka. The book follows Maali Almeida, a war photographer by day, closet gay, and gambler by night, during Sri Lankan's civil war (1983-1990). This novel mixes second-person storytelling, magical realism, and historical fiction. It won the 2022 International Man Booker Prize.

It guides the reader through the sociological scene of the 80s/90s in Sri Lanka, a country torn by war, ethnic cleansing, and the blood of innocents.

I really loved this book. The concept hooks you in, the execution and characters make you stay. It shows that there rarely is a good and a bad side in a war. Every party has its interests at the end of the day, despite having started with “good” intentions.

It reflects upon death (what is there after it?/people will forget about you eventually/death is always around us, even if cannot see it or sense it.), war itself (how guiltless civilians are just pawns for the powerful, wars are orchestrated and are profitable), hypocrisies in relationships and the true nature of the human being.

Long(ish) books aren't for me as they take me a really long time to read and I just get disenchanted with the story overall. However, the pace of this book kept me hooked from the very first page.

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Nonetheless, it's raw and graphic, something that not everyone enjoys (and that's okay!). History and geopolitics are very niche interests of mine. To be honest, I had never heard about the Sri Lankan civil war before. Thus, this novel granted me the opportunity to learn and delve into it and other topics.