The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Shehan Karunatilaka’s "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" is an intense and roaring satire about the civil war in Sri Lanka in 1990.

 

Maali Almeida is a gambler, war photographer and secretly gay. He is also dead. He wakes up sinking in the Beira lake with his dismembered body and with no clue about who killed him. In a time of death squads, suicide bombers and hired hitmen it could be anybody. The ghouls and ghosts that wanders around agrees. Maali has sevens moons left to find his loved ones and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that can change the fate of Sri Lanka.

"The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" is a surreal, disturbing and wild novel about a terrible chapter in the history of Sri Lanka.

 

"The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" by Shehan Karunatilaka was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.