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LONDON — Author Shehan Karunatilaka gained the distinguished Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida,” a satirical “afterlife noir” set throughout Sri Lanka’s brutal civil conflict.
Karunatilaka, one in all Sri Lanka’s main authors, gained the 50,000 pound ($57,000) award for his second novel. The 47-year-old, who has additionally written journalism, youngsters’s books, screenplays and rock songs, is the second Sri Lanka-born Booker Prize winner, after Michael Ondaatje, who took the trophy in 1992 for “The English Affected person.”
Karunatilaka obtained the award from Camilla, Britain’s queen consort, throughout a ceremony at London’s Roundhouse live performance corridor.
The judges’ unanimous alternative, “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” is the darkly humorous story a couple of murdered conflict photographer investigating his demise and making an attempt to make sure his life’s legacy.
Karunatilaka mentioned Sri Lankans “focus on gallows humor and make jokes within the face of crises.”
“It is our coping mechanism,” he mentioned, and expressed hope that his novel about conflict and ethnic division would at some point be “within the fantasy part of the bookshop.”
Former British Museum director Neil MacGregor, who chaired the judging panel, mentioned judges selected the ebook for “the ambition, the scope and the ability, the daring, the audacity and the hilarity of the execution.”
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“It is a ebook that takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey by life and demise, proper to what the creator describes because the darkish coronary heart of the world,” MacGregor mentioned. “And there the reader finds to their shock, pleasure, tenderness, love and loyalty.”
The winner was chosen over 5 different finalists: American authors Percival Everett for “The Timber” and Elizabeth Strout for “Oh William!”; “Glory” by Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo; Irish author Claire Keegan’s “Small Issues Like These;” and “Treacle Walker” by British author Alan Garner.
Karunatilaka paid tribute to his fellow authors on the 13-book longlist and six-book shortlist for the prize.
“It has been a hell of a experience, and I have been anticipating to get off at every cease,” he mentioned.
The five-member jury learn 170 novels earlier than selecting a winner. MacGregor mentioned all of the books explored the actions of people in a world “the place fastened factors are transferring, disintegrating.”
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He mentioned “what’s putting in all of them is the load of historical past” — from the legacy of racism in america to colonialism and repression in Zimbabwe — and the way that shapes the alternatives and actions of people.
“Historical past as a participant in up to date politics is, I believe, one of many issues that emerges from a lot of the shortlist books,” MacGregor mentioned. “Which is hardly stunning, given the present debates about historical past.”
“All these books present why it (historical past) needs to be taught, addressed and mentioned — as a result of in any other case we will not perceive the framework inside which individuals should make the massive selections, the important selections, of their lives,” he mentioned.
Based in 1969, the Booker Prize has a popularity for remodeling writers’ careers. It was initially open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers however eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English printed within the U.Ok.
Final yr’s winner was “The Promise,” by South Africa’s Damon Galgut.
The occasion was the primary absolutely in-person Booker ceremony for the reason that pre-pandemic occasion in 2019 and the primary for longtime literacy champion Camilla since her husband grew to become King Charles III final month after the demise of his mom Queen Elizabeth II.
The occasion additionally included a speech from singer-songwriter Dua Lipa about her love of studying, and a mirrored image from author Elif Shafak on what the assault on novelist Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed onstage in August, means for writers around the globe.
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