JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile
This year’s Booker Prize novel is also one of its most compelling audiobooks. Set in a violent phase of Sri Lanka’s recent history, the story is often grim—but also deliciously ingenious and suspenseful. The narrator, recently murdered, addresses himself as “you,” reconstructing a storyline in which the afterlife exists simultaneously with the living world and the victim tracks down his own killer. Actor and musician Shivantha Wijesinha is the novel’s voice brought to life, an immensely talented new audiobook performer who evokes a range of Sri Lankan characters with subtlety and vigor that match the author’s own. Wijesinha is a natural who takes in the narrative whole while losing himself to it entirely, and this remarkable novel is also a remarkable debut. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
What the judges particularly admired and enjoyed in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was the ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques. — The 2022 Booker Prize
BBC - Rebecca Jones
"This book is difficult to categorise. With ghosts and spirits in the afterlife, it is part supernatural. But it also gives you a thorough grounding in Sri Lankan politics. And as the narrative gathers pace it becomes a whodunnit. The result is a thrilling read."
Times [UK] - James Walton
"There can’t be many novels that simultaneously bring to mind Agatha Christie, Salman Rushdie, Raymond Chandler, John le Carré and Stranger Things—but this one does... Karunatilaka respects the conventions of all the genres that he piles up so extravagantly... The result is an unexpectedly exhilarating read."
Telegraph - Claire Allfree
"A mix of mischievous magic realism and absurdist humour... [A] wild, uncategorisable [novel]."
New European Review - Charlie Connelly
"The most significant work of Sri Lankan fiction in a decade... Amid the dryness, satire and weary lamentations on the state of Sri Lanka there is genuine heart to this novel."
Economist
"Comic, macabre, angry and thumpingly alive... [Maali’s voice] has bite, brilliance, and sparkle... Still, the furious comedy in Mr. Karunatilaka’s novel never courts despair."
Guardian - Tomiwa Owolade
"The obvious literary comparisons are with the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. But the novel also recalls the mordant wit and surrealism of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls or Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita... Karunatilaka has done artistic justice to a terrible period in his country’s history."
JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile
This year’s Booker Prize novel is also one of its most compelling audiobooks. Set in a violent phase of Sri Lanka’s recent history, the story is often grim—but also deliciously ingenious and suspenseful. The narrator, recently murdered, addresses himself as “you,” reconstructing a storyline in which the afterlife exists simultaneously with the living world and the victim tracks down his own killer. Actor and musician Shivantha Wijesinha is the novel’s voice brought to life, an immensely talented new audiobook performer who evokes a range of Sri Lankan characters with subtlety and vigor that match the author’s own. Wijesinha is a natural who takes in the narrative whole while losing himself to it entirely, and this remarkable novel is also a remarkable debut. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
