An epic ghost story

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER: WAR PHOTOGRAPHER IN VIOLENT AFTERLIFE

- Hein Kaiser

The creative process is curious, and for 2022 Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, it held true to the adage of equal amounts of inspiration and perspiration. He never set out to write a novel that would claim the accolade in the first place. It was happenstance and good fortune, he said. "I thought I was just writing a murder mystery," he said. His novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, tells the story of the ghost of a war photographer navigating a violent afterlife in Sri Lanka. He was murdered in the country's civil war and the novel is set against the backdrop of post-war uncertainty, when Karunatilaka, like many, had hopes for national renewal.

"The war ended in 2009, and we thought it would be a new start," he said. "But what came after was more anger, a lot of bickering and unfulfilled promises."

It was during this turbulent socio-political period that a thought struck him: "What if the victims of Sri Lanka's wars could tell their own stories?" But Seven Moons began as a completely different project, one he first drafted as what he called a "slasher horror" that was set around the 2004 tsunami. Initially it was called The Devil Dance.

Something was amiss. He worked through years of revisions and rewrites, ultimately discarding entire drafts.