Writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction for his work 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida,' a satirical "afterlife noir" set during Sri Lanka's brutal civil war.
Karunatilaka received the award from Camilla, Britain's queen consort, during a ceremony at London's Roundhouse concert hall, reported AP News. The 47-year-old author is the second
Sri Lanka-born Booker Prize winner after Michael Ondaatje who won it in 1992 for "The English Patient."
Karunatilaka's work was judges' inanimous choice. It dabbles in dark humour and follows a murdered war photographer investigating his death and trying to ensure his life's legacy. He won 50,000 pound (USD 57,000) for his second novel.
Karunatilaka said Sri Lankans "specialise in gallows humour and make jokes in the face of crises". "It's our coping mechanism," he was quoted by AP. The leading author also expressed hope that his novel about war and ethnic division would one day be "in the fantasy section of the bookshop."
The writer added that it was in 2009 that he decided to write "a ghost story where the dead could offer their perspective." He was motivated by the brutal Sri Lankan civil war, "when there was a raging debate over how many civilians died and whose fault it was".
"My hope is that in the not too distant future... Sri Lanka has understood that these ideas of corruption and race-baiting and cronyism have not worked and will never work," Karunatilaka added as he accepted the prize.
The author, who has penned journalism, children's books, screenplays and rock songs, had won the Commonwealth Book Prize for his debut work 'Chinaman.'
According to dormer British Museum director Neil MacGregor, who chaired the judging panel, 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. "And there the reader finds to their surprise, joy, tenderness, love and loyalty."
Monday's event was the first fully in-person Booker ceremony since the Covid outbreak in 2019. The event also saw artist Dua Lipa's speech about her love of reading, and writer Elif Shafak's take on the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie.
