The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

“The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” is a novel by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka. The book follows Maali Almeida, a war photographer by day, closet gay, and gambler by night, during Sri Lankan's civil war (1983-1990). This novel mixes second-person storytelling, magical realism, and historical fiction. It won the 2022 International Man Booker Prize.

It guides the reader through the sociological scene of the 80s/90s in Sri Lanka, a country torn by war, ethnic cleansing, and the blood of innocents.

I really loved this book. The concept hooks you in, the execution and characters make you stay. It shows that there rarely is a good and a bad side in a war. Every party has its interests at the end of the day, despite having started with “good” intentions.

It reflects upon death (what is there after it?/people will forget about you eventually/death is always around us, even if cannot see it or sense it.), war itself (how guiltless civilians are just pawns for the powerful, wars are orchestrated and are profitable), hypocrisies in relationships and the true nature of the human being.

Long(ish) books aren't for me as they take me a really long time to read and I just get disenchanted with the story overall. However, the pace of this book kept me hooked from the very first page.

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Nonetheless, it's raw and graphic, something that not everyone enjoys (and that's okay!). History and geopolitics are very niche interests of mine. To be honest, I had never heard about the Sri Lankan civil war before. Thus, this novel granted me the opportunity to learn and delve into it and other topics.

I'm usually not one to read award winning books, especially something like a Booker Prize because they mostly tend to be literary fiction and that's not a genre I'm frequently looking for. But when the news of this book winning the award came about and I realized that it's both South Asian and speculative fiction, I knew I had to give it a try. And it also felt like a big oversight on my part that I purport to support Asian/South Asian authors and books on my blog but I truly don't remember reading anything set in Sri Lanka except a couple of short stories last year. When I finally got the audiobook from my library yesterday, I just didn't wanna wait anymore and gobbled up the whole thing in just a few hours.

I truly don't have words to describe what kind of a book this is. It's totally political because it's set in the 80s with various political factions like the government and the JVP, as well as liberation movements like the LTTE - each committing horrific violence on the other side, and no one more so than the ruling party - but it's also supernatural with the main character being dead at the beginning and his soul (or ghost maybe) trying to figure out his afterlife (and in between); as well as a murder mystery because our ghost doesn't remember how he died.

The story might start with ghosts and afterlife but it is so rooted in its Sri Lankan setting that you can't help but feel like you are wandering those streets with our main character, watching that horrific violence unfold in front of your eyes, and wonder what even is the point of it all. At the same time, we also get some spectacular supernatural world building, with its inspirations from Hinduism and Buddhism, making it seem both familiar and new to me - so many different creatures with their own functions, many souls who haven't gotten over the violence of their deaths, and the souls deciding between doing something about the injustice or forgetting it all and moving on into the Light. It's all a mix of fascinating concepts to read about and the author's satirical writing style makes it all very engaging even when we can see that the situation is all bleak.

Our main character Maali is a gay man in a country in strife who won't agree to either call himself a queer person and at the same time won't agree that the situation in his homeland is hopeless. He is a photographer who has captured many horrific scenes, even at the behest of those committing the violence and using his pictures as propaganda, but he still believes that someday his photos will lead to a reckoning. It almost feels like his naïveté that such a thing is possible but when he tries hard to make his work known even from the other side of death, we are very much inclined to root for him. Through his endeavors, we get to meet the people in his life who have had significant impacts on him but whom he probably didn't appreciate enough when alive. We also meet the many souls with their own grievances along with him, as he traverses his new reality. And along with it all, we also kind of get a mystery, with Maali trying his best to reminisce his last moments and piece together the truth of his death and the ones responsible, which when revealed did come as a shock to me.

Overall, I can just say that I was left marveling at the author's genius both while reading and at the end. This is a book that packs a punch and takes a quite no holds barred approach to showcasing political violence, but is also funny and whimsical and sad and everything in between. The audiobook narrator Shivantha Wijesinha did a spectacular job with his voice and bringing this world to life and I'm just so glad I got to experience this book through his narration. I can't pinpoint who will exactly appreciate this book but if you are someone who love inventive speculative fiction/ magical realism with a very realistic political setting, then this will be a great choice for you.

This was a very challenging first half. I am not sure why the first half was so dense compared to the first but half way through the plot resolution and pace really picked up. The first half took me the better part of a week, the second half took me an afternoon.

I appreciated all the backstory around the Sri Lankan civil war. It's a country/time period I knew nothing about.

The characterization is very good in this book but I also think this book suffers from having too many characters. May just be my personal preference.

This book reads very acerbic. For having an extremely dark, graphically violent backdrop, there are some gallows humor moments.

What a brilliant book! Went into this, not knowing anything about SriLankan politics or the wars. The plot, with the heaven and afterlife and wandering souls and demons and protests and raw real people doing real people things, was refreshing. Absolutely a great book with a unique story to start the year with, I remember gushing about the story to anyone who would listen.

This review is specifically for the audiobook version narrated by Shivantha Wijesinha.
This is not just a book, it's an experience where dark humor meets magical realism, militant ghosts and a main character that is both endearing and ambiguous in 1990s Sri Lanka. Both narration and story were 5 stars experiences for me. Wijesinha's expressive rhythm and intonations made for an immersive experience, and I would probably listen to just about anything if he's the one reading it. Really, I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed my time with this book. Grim and beautiful, sorrowful but not without hope, queer in a way that is neither sorry nor unapologetic but rather in a “it is what it is” sort of way, it's nuanced and really lives up to its cover art.
The imagery in this book is sometimes brutal and Wijesinha really brings it to life.
This book reminded me of another favorite of mine, Ghost Town by Kevin Chen, for the way the events slowly reveal themselves through what I would call accidents of a character study. The story is peppered with pop culture references which was something I did not expect but enjoyed in the same way as Ghost Town is peppered with talks of food. Don't get me wrong they are very different stories, they just share a similar story telling form and if you loved one you'll probably love the other too.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this audiobook from HighBridge Audio on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

  Sometimes I don't judge books by their covers, I judge them by their titles.  When I read the name of this book I was immediately interested and wanted to pick it up.  390 pages later, I'm glad I did.    The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (which I'll refer to as Seven Moons from this point on) is a really interesting book that fits nicely into multiple genres.  It is at times a historical fiction book about the Sri Lankan civil war that took place between 1983 and 2009.  At other times it is a love story between two men in a society that does not want to accept their love.  At other times still it is a mystery thriller with the focus being Almeida's murder.  And most of all it is speculative fiction that attempts to answer life's greatest question: what happens to us after we die?  Note how I said in the first paragraph that this book is only 390 pages and yet all the plots I just talked about get enough focus that I feel each story wraps up nicely.  This is not an easy feat.  Balancing these genres alone is the mark of a skilled writer, let alone managing them in such a way that each genre can feel fulfilled in under 400 pages.     Karunatilaka really shows himself to be an incredibly talented writer here.  Not only is his command of narrative and pacing strong, he just paints beautiful pictures with his words as his brush.  His protagonist Maali Almeida is a photographer by trade and as such this is a book that is heavy on imagery.  Karunatilaka is spectacular at painting scenes of horrific bloodshed as well as those of passionate love.  His writing is just so vivid in a way that makes me feel like I'm in each of his settings.    This is an excellent book by a really strong writer and I can't recommend it enough. 

3.5 stars. I wanted to love this book. The premise and concept sounded phenomenal (and it won the Booker!) - I expected something similar to Midnight's Children (one of my favs). However, despite genius moments of humour, horror and revelations, I found it to be very repetitive. It probably could have been a hundred pages shorter. The beginning and the end were 5 stars worthy.

There's so much wrong with this book. Every fundamental plot device is silly: the existence of a spirit after death; the idea that said spirit could see hear smell (violation of laws of physics); that said spirit could have desires and emotions (chemical/biological processes); and then the gimmicks on top of that, like the amnesia thing, how convenient; all of it makes for a book I would toss aside in the first few pages.

But I didn't. And it wasn't a stick-with-it thing: I enjoyed every page—okay, almost every page; some of the violence was sickening but I breathed through that—and despite the absurdity I fell deeper and deeper in love with the book. And the payoff is oh so worth it.

The book triggers so many of my hot buttons (in good ways) but I'll focus on asymmetry because so many central themes revolve around it and because Karunatilaka does such a masterful job weaving it into every element of the story. Porous asymmetries: Maali's spirit is thrown into an afterlife whose rules are only partially explained, ... with dangerous gaps; the amnesia gimmick is an effective tension-building device, leaking information slowly to Maali and the reader, information that changes the context of what has transpired so far. In addition to the information asymmetries there are asymmetries of power, of attraction/attractiveness, and of morality. The unusual second-person narration is powerful: I often find that gimmick distancing; here it drew me in, made me identify with and feel a strong connection to Maali.

Some of my other hot buttons: Letting things go. The value of life. Compassion. All of them exquisitely handled, not necessarily with the resolution I would've preferred, but one I find more than satisfying.

A very good balance between fun and darkness, lighthearted but also deep and intense at times. I found the lore very intriguing and wish it would have been fleshed out even more. The characters felt very real and I even got genuinely angry at some of them, while truly feeling for others. Overall a really entertaining and well-written take on a murder-mystery, almost redefining the genre. 

Bored Without War

First all I should say I'm huge fan of his previous one "Chinaman" which I read it's translated one. So I have already had big hopes for this one, in top of that this is the 2022 Booker Prize winning book. So I'm literally over the moon to read this.

Finally after nearly one and half year later I'm buying I find the time dive into this. So overall it's a mix rollercoaster for me, which of course I will break down in details.

For the start I think it's marvelous the way it's flow I hooked to the story asap great storytelling bravo but as soon as it goes it's getting some distraction like build up the sub plots and connecting with the main one. Some times it's so dragging and sometimes so rushing. Maybe it's only with me idk. And that ending is kinda meh to be honest, I mean he tried to make some climax but kinda felt like failed attempt.

Overall what can I say is it's a good reading but I have big hopes so maybe that's why I felt like this way but I can recommend this to anyone.

Wow, alright.

This book was unlike any book I've ever read, though that may only be because I'm 16 and mostly read feel-good YA novels.
But this was...incredible! There was so much going on, so many characters, so many things that I just couldn't keep track of but I still made my way through knowing enough to understand most of what was happening.
What really struck me was how so much happened, and Maali seemed like this hugely important character in many ways, while simultaneously feeling very unimportant as well. But there were characters that knew of him, and cared about him, whether kindly or maliciously. But then, by the very end, you find that life has moved on beyond him, and his photographs, his best friend, and his lover have all moved on from him, and everything that was Maali Almeida is over. It felt in some ways rather depressing, but there is beauty and hope in how he was able to start again, be reborn, with all knowledge of who he was and all his work and pain and love forgotten.