Book
The seven moons of Maali Almeida : a novel / Shehan Karunatilaka.
"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 serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka."-- Amazon.com.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781324064824 (paperback)
- Physical Description: 388 pages ; 21 cm
- Edition: First American edition.
- Publisher: New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, 2023.
- Copyright: ©2022
Content descriptions
| Awards Note: | Winner of the Booker Prize, 2022. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Photographers > Sri Lanka > Fiction. Death > Fiction. Sri Lanka > History > Fiction. Colombo (Sri Lanka) > Fiction. |
Available copies
- 13 of 13 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Fort St. James Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 13 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fort St. James Public Library | KAR (Text) | 35196000316245 | Adult Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2022 December #1
A murdered Sri Lankan photojournalist strives to put his afterlife to good use. Karunatilaka's rich, engrossing second novel, the winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, opens with its title character in a post-mortem waiting room in 1990. There, he's informed that he has seven moons (i.e., nights) to remain on Earth as a ghost before entering the Light and the next life. He could head Light-ward right away, but Maali has too many unanswered questions. How was he killed? Who killed him? What has happened to his lover, Dilan, and his best friend, Jaki? And can he somehow tip them off to the location of photos he shot that reveal the depths of the war-torn island's atrocities? With that setup, Karunatilaka's novel is at once a murder mystery and a historical novel of the island nation's violent struggles throughout the '80s. That necessitates explaining a host of ethnic and political factions, plus outside forces from India to the United States, on top of which Karunatilaka layers a host of otherworldly ghouls, demons, and spirits that Maali has to navigate. But despite that complexity, the novel reads smoothly and powerfully, buoyed by Maali's defiant and flawed personaâhis weeklong stint as a dead man means reckoning with his sexual promiscuity, gambling habit, and unsettled family as much as the riots and state-sponsored death squads he's strived to expose. Though the novel is maximalist in its plotting, it's intimate in the tellingâKarunatilaka writes in the second person to better root the reader in a maelstrom of characters and otherworldly incidents. And the main point gets across: The world is sick with violence and corruption, but truth will out, and the possibility for change exists if we don't succumb to defeatism. A manic, witty, artfully imagined tale of speaking truth to power. Copyright Kirkus 2022 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
