Civil war & peace

Shehan Karunatilaka's Booker Prize-winning novel captures a Sri Lanka in turmoil. But his writing career was sparked in a quiet corner of New Zealand.

- KIRAN DASS

Should anyone doubt the importance of libraries, Shehan Karunatilaka is living proof that they can, in fact, change lives.

As a teenager living in Whanganui, Karunatilaka spent so many hours in his school library that it inspired him to take up writing as a career. And as we all now know, that was no folly.

At the end of last year, his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, won the Booker Prize. He is the first Sri Lankan novelist to win the Booker since Michael Ondaatje won in 1992 for his sweeping epic The English Patient.

Born in Galle, Sri Lanka, in 1975, Karunatilaka moved with his family to New Zealand in 1990 when he was 15. His doctor father took up a post at Whanganui Hospital, which was then experiencing a doctor shortage. Karunatilaka was sent to board at Whanganui Collegiate.

"And, of course, I hated the whole experience," he says. "It's different when you're one of the few brown kids at boarding school wearing a uniform. Even though my country was messed up, I didn't want to leave my friends and go to Whanganui." To alleviate the huge upheaval and displacement, Karunatilaka found refuge in books in the school library. "It was probably what made me want to be a writer, all those hours I spent at that library."

Karunatilaka went on to study at Massey University in Palmerston North before living in Wellington, then going on to live and work (mostly in advertising and copywriting) in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. He now lives in the Sri Lankan city of Colombo with his wife and their two young children.