Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems …
It’s like Beetlejuice, but Sri Lankan
4 stars
A Sri Lankan war photojournalist in 1990 is murdered and winds up in the afterlife. But he’s given the opportunity to travel anywhere his name is uttered, at least for the next 7 moons (nights). It’s a little bit mystery- we don’t really know what happened to him to lead to his untimely death - a little bit fantasy, some romance, some comedy. At times the prose is a bit tough to get through as it uses a second-person narrative to tell the story. But when I got to chance to sit down for extended periods, it sat well with me and I loved what it was doing.
I worried a bit that it had too many ideas. For instance, there was a great part in the middle of the book about the spirits doing jobs for a guru who had the ability to speak to them. If they did, …
A Sri Lankan war photojournalist in 1990 is murdered and winds up in the afterlife. But he’s given the opportunity to travel anywhere his name is uttered, at least for the next 7 moons (nights). It’s a little bit mystery- we don’t really know what happened to him to lead to his untimely death - a little bit fantasy, some romance, some comedy. At times the prose is a bit tough to get through as it uses a second-person narrative to tell the story. But when I got to chance to sit down for extended periods, it sat well with me and I loved what it was doing.
I worried a bit that it had too many ideas. For instance, there was a great part in the middle of the book about the spirits doing jobs for a guru who had the ability to speak to them. If they did, he used old objects of theirs to get followers to pray to them - which gave them power in the afterlife. It’s mentioned once where the guru is hired by a widow to seek out the ghost of her passed husband to figure out where he buried his fortune. This whole concept could have been a series of graphic novels or a whole “monster of the week” television show. Hmm. Maybe i could think about doing that.
Maali is too connected and has his hands in too many pots in the Sri Lankan civil war to live very long. We were given a brief tutorial on the main players of the conflict at the beginning of the book, but it was too hard to keep them straight and no one seemed above reproach. One of those issues probably created by the British colonizers and fueled by ethnic cleansing. No one wins. Maali is trying to make enough money through his photos to get out, but just doesn’t make it. We assume that he’s killed by one of these factions, but the truth is much sadder.
This novel won the Booker Prize from 2022 which is probably why I put it on my reading list. I had considered trying to stay on top of the Booker winners in the last decade, so will continue that thought and try to work those in where I can.