The good thing about prizes like the Booker is that they provide visibility to authors who might never have been translated into French otherwise. This is the case of Sri Lankan Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the prestigious award in 2022 with this title.
And what a discovery this novel is, which in no way resembles what is usually written in the West, if only for this clever combination of avant-garde writing and mysticism which runs through it through and through.
In the 1980s, civil war raged on the small island in the Indian Ocean. Maali Almeida is a war photographer who lands in the In-Between, alongside countless lost souls who have not finished with the Here Below; he has seven moons, or seven nights, before reaching the Beyond. But he is unable to remember her death, convinced that he is drifting into a psychedelic dream after swallowing one of his friend Jaki’s “magic” pills.
Addicted to gambling, homosexual in a country where his orientation can get him into serious trouble, he has photographed all the massacres of recent years and even joined the feared Tigers. And he firmly believes that his mysterious hidden photos can end the bloody conflict tearing his country apart, so he sets off on a mad dash through the streets of Colombo to make sure they don’t end up in the wrong hands.
Through the plot, the author takes the opportunity to give us an express – and fascinating – history lesson on the country and its successive colonizations. The only thing we could criticize about it is the dizzying mass of information that we must assimilate in order to succeed in following the first part of the book. That said, this downside does not make it a sufficient reason to miss this captivating read, which is carried by bubbling writing and black humor as scathing as it is irresistible.
The seven moons of Maali Almeida
Calmann-Lévy
509 pages