The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022) by Shehan Karunatilaka

 Book Review

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022) 

by Shehan Karunatilaka

   I missed this 2022 Booker Prize winner during my long COVID era- which lasted roughly one year from when I got COVID to when I was back to something close to like what I was before in terms of reading capacity.  Long COVID is no joke- though I count myself lucky that I didn't have any PHYSICAL long COVID symptoms, continued to do my job etc.  At the time I thought if that was the worst COVID impact- well it could have been much worse.

  For me, the Booker Prize is the primary way I keep track of literary fiction from South Asia:  India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lank included.  The level of interest inside the US is basically nil, and promoting authors from all corners of the Commonwealth is at the center of the Booker Prize mission.  Most of the works of literary fiction written by South Asian authors inside the US tends to be immigrant coming-of-age stories or a variation on the multi-generational family history book.  Shehan Karunatilaka is from Sri Lanka, which is a particularly interesting place for literary fiction right now being both an English speaking place, a place of tremendous diversity- human and otherwise and a site of recent generational trauma (the long civil war against the Taiml separatists), and present uncertainty  (Chinese influenced debt crisis.)  In this regard, Sri Lankan literature sometimes feels like it belongs in Latin America since the Sri Lankan experience roughly mirrors the history of Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

  One might reasonably expect a burst of creativity out of the cultural conditions outlined above, and thus, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which combines a very specific Sri Lankan narrative with plot devices and themes that are in common with those in other cutting edge works of literary fiction in the west, was a worthy Booker Prize winner.  I checked out the Audiobook, because I figured the narration would be a real accent fest- what is a Sri Lankan accent, anyway? I was not disappointed- I loved the Audiobook.

  I also loved the book itself which combines the supernatural, civil war and LGBTQ issues with humor to create an intoxicating stew of a novel.  It's no wonder it won the Booker Prize.