the seven moons of maali almeida book review

He can’t remember how it happened, but having spent his life chronicling the misdeeds of his country’s ruling class and hanging about in some very low places, there is no shortage of rogues with both motive and opportunity to do him in. Once a cynical, well-connected photojournalist with a voracious, illicit sex life and a well-concealed streak of idealism, he is now a ghost caught in the “In Between”. This second book, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, seems to have faced a similar struggle before seeing publication, and several publishers were doubtless left blushing at their misjudgment after learning of its inclusion on the Booker Prize longlist, let alone when it won the overall prize.

The book was as much a study of Sri Lanka’s recent political history as of its cricket team, perennial underdogs whose influence on the modern game is easily as profound as that of the legendary West Indies led by Clive Lloyd. Readers unmoved by the charms of cricket should not be fazed by the praise it received from Wisden (it was runner-up in its list of greatest cricket books ever written). That book, following the rise and mysterious vanishing of an improbably talented Sri Lankan bowler, was first self-published, but has since come to be firmly established as a classic of modern South Asian fiction. Admirers of his cracking debut, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010), have been wondering what became of Shehan Karunatilaka.

The seven moons of maali almeida book review