Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka wins Booker Prize

The author was presented with his trophy by Queen Consort Camilla in a ceremony held at the Roundhouse. 

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, published by the independent press Sort of Books, explores life after death in a noir investigation set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war.

In Colombo, 1990, war photographer Maali Almeida is dead, and has no idea who has killed him. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka. It has been described by the Booker Prize judges as ‘whodunnit and a race against time, full of ghosts, gags and a deep humanity.’

It is Karunatilaka’s much-anticipated second novel; his debut, Chinaman (2011), won the Commonwealth Prize, the DSL and the Gratiaen Prize, and was selected for the BBC and The Reading Agency's Big Jubilee Read last year. 

  Neil MacGregor, Chair of the 2022 judges, says: "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 justify every human life."

Gaby Wood, Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, adds: "This year’s Booker judges have formed an incredible team. At their final meeting they were sad to disband, and to be separated from the books that had kept them company. They had come to find that reading, a private act, had become bigger and richer when it was done in a group, and as they showed one another what each of the novels they read could be."