Sri Lankan Author Shehan Karunatilaka Wins 2022 Booker Prize

Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka on Monday won Britain's Booker Prize for fiction for his work "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida", about a journalist murdered amid the country's sectarian strife.

Sri Lankan writer Sheehan Karunatilaka won Britain's Booker Prize on Monday for his book "The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida," which is about the murder of a journalist in the midst of the country's sectarian conflict.

“My hope for Seven Moons is this… in the not-too-distant future…

It is read in Sri Lanka that the ideas of corruption, ethnic seduction and nepotism have not and never will work.”

“I hope it will be in print in 10 years, but if it is, I hope it will be written in (a) Sri Lanka that you learn from its stories, and that Seven Moons will be in the fiction department of the library...

Next to dragons, he wouldn't confuse unicorns (and) realism or political satire."

Karunatilaka, 47, is the second Sri Lankan to win the award, after Michael Ondaatjee won in 1992 for "The English Patient".

Aside from the £50,000 ($56,000) prize, winning Booker can provide a job-

Change your sales increase and overall profile.

The chair of the jury, Neil MacGregor, described the book as "the noir of the afterlife that blurs the boundaries of not just different genres, but of life and death, body and soul, East and West."

The book is set in the chaos of the civil war that devastated Colombo in the late 1980s.

War and gambling photographer H.E. Almeida is murdered, sets off into the afterlife to find out who is responsible and expose the brutality of the conflict, and has seven moons to do so.

The Booker Prize judges described him as "a whore and a race against time, full of ghosts and gags and deeply human."

- Honoring Mantell -

Karunatilaka's debut, Chinaman (2011), won the Commonwealth Prize and was selected for BBC and The Reading Agency's Big Jubilee Read last year.

The Awards Gala in London was Booker's first large-scale in-person event since 2019.

Queen Consort Camilla bestowed the prestigious award at the televised ceremony, in one of her highest awards-

Since her husband, King Charles III, came to the throne last month.

"Without being cliched, we're all winners for being a part of this awesome shortlist, though, so maybe I'll get some extra cash if it's that good?" Karunatilaka joked as he received the award.

The evening event also included a speech by the singer-

Songwriter Dua Lipa.

All but one of the six shortlisted authors attended in person, with Englishman Alan Garner, who turned eighty-eight on Monday, turning up around.

Garner, who has made his name with children's fantasy and popular novels, was nominated for the shortlist for "Treacle Walker," the novel with the shortest word count.

Other shortlisted authors include No Violet Bulawayo, for "Glory," an animal tale set in her native Zimbabwe.

American Percival Everett was included in the movie Trees, and independent publisher Influx Press earned first place on Booker's shortlist.

American writer Elizabeth Strout appeared in "Oh William!" While "Small Things Like This" Irish writer Claire Keegan completed the shortlist.

The Booker is Britain's number one literary prize for novels written in the English language. Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantell.

Monday's ceremony saw a special tribute to Mantel, who died last month at the age of 70.

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