I found the novel's first 50 pages overwritten and self-conscious but it settled into a more confident tone
But after reading 170 novels and whittling them down to a final six – that made for an electrifying shortlist – the judges opted for an unlikely winner in Karunatilaka whose novel is published by the small independent press Sort Of Books.is set in the 90s, at the height of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war. It is narrated in the second person “you” voice by its eponymous protagonist who, at the beginning, wakes up dead.
Maali exists in “the in-between” – dead but not yet in the afterlife – where he has seven moons to find out what happened to him. Maali watches his family grieving, coming up against corrupt police, as the novel roams widely to what Karunatilaka has called “the dark heart of the world.”, a clever chronicle of Sri Lankan history through the prism of cricket.
The chair of the Booker Prize judges Neil MacGregor said the novel “takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through life and death… and there the reader finds to her surprise joy, tenderness, love and loyalty”.Time will tell whether the first part of that statement is accurate, but the second part is undoubtedly true.
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