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Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka

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Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize in 2022. He is considered one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors. In addition to his novels he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories

Shehan Karunatilaka emerged on to the global literary stage in 2011, when he won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSL and Gratiaen Prize for his debut novel, Chinaman. The book was declared the second-best cricket book of all time by Wisden.

Born in Galle, Sri Lanka, in 1975, Karunatilaka grew up in Colombo, studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. He currently lives in Sri Lanka. His songs, scripts and stories have been published in Rolling Stone, GQ and National Geographic. He has worked as an advertising copywriter and played guitar in a band called Independent Square.

His second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, was announced as the winner of the Booker Prize 2022 on October 17 at a ceremony in London.

 

Read more on Shehan Karunatilaka

Watch our videos

Shehan Karunatilaka answers questions about 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida' | The Booker Prize

Prasanna Puwanarajah reads an extract from 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida' | The Booker Prize

The story so far: Maali Almeida, a war photographer, has been killed. In the afterlife, he has ‘seven moons’ to find out who murdered him, while, in the real world, local detectives must first find the rest of his body

Prasanna Puwanarajah reads from 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida' | The Booker Prize

The story so far: Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office

Life after death in Sri Lanka: an afterlife noir, with nods to Dante and Buddha and yet unpretentious. Fizzes with energy, imagery and ideas against a broad, surreal vision of the Sri Lankan civil wars. Slyly, angrily comic

The 2022 judges on The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Writing inspiration

In this video, Shehan Karunatilaka answers readers’ questions and talks about the ‘big ideas’ books that inspired him, including:

Plus he talks of his love of ‘Uncle’ Kurt Vonnegut and Stephen King.

   
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Winner of The Booker Prize 2022

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Sort Of Books
Shehan Karunatilaka’s second novel won the Booker Prize in 2022. It is a searing, mordantly funny satire set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war