WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
A brave and brilliantly inventive novel, full of energy, about a mad bad world in a dark time – Romesh Gunesekera
An exuberant whodunnit ...There can't be many novels that simultaneously bring to mind Agatha Christie, Salman Rushdie and John le Carré - but this one does ― The Times
A searing, mordantly funny, state-of-the- nation satire set amid the murderous mayhem of Sri Lanka beset by civil war.
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time when scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts who cluster around him can attest.
But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.
Customer Review
By far the best book I read this year. The idea of “God” as a bad time manager is intriguing. “I mean he’s always late, and cannot prioritise.”
Staff Choice: Sophie
Simultaneously magical realist literary fiction, murder mystery, and philosophical treatise on life and how to possibly live it, this hit a lot of the feels; I cried, I laughed, and I was very often aghast. It reminded me a lot of A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, also a Booker Prize winner, incidentally (and with “seven” in the title). A worthy award winner, in other words, and a great read to pick up if you’re in the mood for serious fiction that shines a light on a difficult time in history (the civil war in Sri Lanka), and does so with bounteous imagination and wit.