The author was awarded for his book The Seven Moons of Maali Almeidaa biting satire set in the civil war that shook his country, Sri Lanka, in the 1990s.
Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize on Monday night for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeidaa biting satire set in the civil war that rocked his country.
The jury hailed the “width and competence, audacity, boldness and hilarity” of the author, who thus saw his second novel crowned.
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.
On receiving the award, Shehan Karunatilaka greeted the other five finalists and thanked his publisher Sort of Books for publishing this “weird, difficult, strange” book. He expressed his hope that “in the not too distant future” Sri Lanka will “understand that these ideas of corruption, greed and cronyism don’t work and never will.”
Second Distinguished Sri Lankan Author
The literary prize was presented to him in London by Queen Consort Camilla, during one of his main public appearances since the accession to the throne of her husband King Charles III, for the first ceremony of the Booker Prize in person since 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Shehan Karunatilaka, 47, is the second Sri Lankan-born writer to win the Booker Prize, after Michael Ondaatje in 1992 for The English Patient.
Five of the six finalist writers present, the dean of the selected, all editions combined, Alan Garner, 88, made an appearance by videoconference. Garner, was selected for his novel Treacle Walker.
50,000 pounds reward
Also in the running was the short novel by Irish writer Claire Keegan, Small Things Like This (These kind of little things), which won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in mid-July. It tells, in 116 pages, the story of a timber and coal merchant in Ireland in 1985.
Two other novelists already selected by the Booker Prize were on the final list: the Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo for Gloryand the American Elizabeth Strout for Oh William!. Finally, the American Percival Everett had been selected for The Treeswhich revisits the 1955 lynching of young African-American Emmet Till in Mississippi.
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 and Hilary Mantel, who died aged 70 last month, are among the writers who received the prize for novels written in English published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.