the seven moons of maali almeida reviews

He recently decided to remove a short story that was too hot to handle from a collection before it was published. When the author worked as a advertising copywriter, he helped promote the postcard-perfect image of Sri Lanka by writing tourist brochures and airline ads.īut there's always turmoil of some kind, he said, and though some may not like the picture of Sri Lanka in Maali Almeida, the real story is far more gruesome than anything on the page.įreedom of speech can't be taken for granted in South Asia according to Karunatilaka, and the potential for dangerous offence is always in the back of his mind during editing. The late 1980s was so many lifetimes ago in Sri Lankan politics the novel felt like historical fiction, Karunatilaka said, while its talking animals and demons helped insulate him too. His book is set during the civil war in the author's homeland, with the plot a way to talk about the long-running conflict without inviting controversy. In Seven Moons, the main character Maali Almeida, a photographer, gambler and 'closet queen', wakes up as a ghost with seven days to find out who killed him.

'I am looking forward to the circus dying down and going back to my boring life of sitting in a room and writing.' 'I am enjoying it but it's not the natural setting - the natural setting is sitting by yourself in a room for years on end,' he said.

It's meant he's only done two or three days of writing in six months. It's all part of a mad ride that has seen magical-realist The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida find a massive global audience (his first novel Chinaman was aimed at cricket tragics). Happily for Karunatilaka, he's staying in the trendy suburb of Fitzroy ahead of his appearance at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Friday night.

The seven moons of maali almeida reviews