Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize on Monday night for his novel « The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida »a biting satire set in the civil war that rocked his country.
The jury hailed “the breadth and skill, the audacity, the boldness and the hilarity” of the author, who sees thus crowned his second novel.
This darkly humorous murder case is set in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, in the post-civil war 1990s. It follows a war photographer, gambler and hidden homosexual, who tries to find out who killed him.
The assurance of an international reputation
The literary prize was presented in London in the presence of Queen Consort Camilla, in the first in-person ceremony since 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Shehan Karunatilaka, 47, is the second Sri Lankan-born writer to receive the Booker Prize, after Michael Ondaatje in 1992. Last year, the prize was awarded to South African author Damon Galgut for The Promise (The promise), a book about time spent in a white farming family in post-apartheid South Africa.
The winner wins the reward of 50,000 pounds (about 60,000 euros) and the assurance of international fame. Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood or Hilary Mantel, who died last month at 70, are among the writers who received the prize for novels written in English.