The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
A dead photographer in Sri Lanka's civil war tries to expose evidence of atrocities from the afterlife. Karunatilaka writes with furious black comedy about state violence, disappearances, and the absurdity of bureaucratic evil. A deeply Sri Lankan novel that speaks to every nation that has destroyed its own citizens.
Names pile up fast: a crowd of Sri Lankan and political-faction characters that several readers say they lost track of, with one flatly stating it was “hard for the reader to keep them straight.” A cluster think the book runs long and repeats itself through a sagging middle, and one wishes for “5 less moons to tell this story and 100 fewer pages.” Readers unfamiliar with the array of governmental, separatist, and outside-power factions report feeling lost without context the book never supplies. For readers skeptical of magical realism on principle, the photograph-and-purgatory mechanics that drive the plot read as contrived rather than clever. One reviewer, treating the Booker win as a foregone conclusion before it happened, notes drily, “Bet you it wins the Booker Prize. It’s almost inevitable.” Another prefers the original title outright: “Chats with the Dead sounds like a much more apt title.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
