Sri Lanka's Shehan Karunatilaka wins coveted Booker Prize for novel set during Civil War
The Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has won the prestigious Booker prize for his novel 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida', set during Sri Lanka's civil war.
Karunatilaka, one of Sri Lanka’s leading authors, won the £50,000 award for his second novel, described as a a satirical “afterlife noir”
The 47-year-old, who has also written journalism, children’s books, screenplays and rock songs, is the second Sri Lanka-born Booker Prize winner, after Michael Ondaatje, who took the trophy in 1992 for “The English Patient.”
Karunatilaka received the award from the Queen Consort during a ceremony at the Roundhouse in London.
The author later said Sri Lankans “specialise in gallows humour and make jokes in the face of crises”.
“It’s our coping mechanism,” he said, and expressed hope that his novel about war and ethnic division would one day be “in the fantasy section of the bookshop.”
Former British Museum director Neil MacGregor, who chaired the judging panel, said judges chose the book for “the ambition, the scope and the skill, the daring, the audacity and the hilarity of the execution.”
“It’s a book that takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through life and death, right to what the author describes as the dark heart of the world,” MacGregor said.
The winner was chosen over five other finalists hailing from America, Zimbabwe, Ireland, and the UK.
Karunatilaka paid tribute to his fellow authors on the 13-book longlist and six-book shortlist for the prize.
“It's been a hell of a ride, and I've been expecting to get off at each stop,” he said.
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize can transform writers’ careers. It was originally only open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers but eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the U.K.
Last year’s winner was “The Promise,” by South Africa’s Damon Galgut.
This year's event was the first in-person ceremony since before the coronavirus pandemic. It included a speech from singer-songwriter Dua Lipa about her love of reading, and a reflection from writer Elif Shafak on what the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed onstage in August, means for writers around the world.