Karunatilaka’s “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” won the 2022 Booker Prize. He discussed his works with Assistant Professor of English Dinidu Karunanayake in Turner Theatre.
In a conversation filled with insights, personal reflections and wry humor, Booker Prize-winning author Shehan Karunatilaka demystified his writing process for Elon audiences during a campus appearance this week.
“When I’m writing, I don’t think about genre or what side of the bookstore it’s going to end up in. You have to finish the thing first,” Karunatilaka said. “Once the book is humming, when it’s talking to you and the characters are talking to you, you don’t feel the need to contrive anything.”
Karunatilaka’s “The Seven Moons of Maali Almedia,” won the 2022 Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the English language. The novel is an absurdist comedy, murder mystery and political satire set during Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 1980s and told from the perspective of a slain journalist.
The author spoke for more than an hour Monday, Oct. 7, in Turner Theatre during a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Assistant Professor of English Dinidu Karunanayake and taking questions from the audience of about 100 people.
Repeatedly calling himself a cynic, he recounted his middle-class Sri Lankan upbringing during an era of political turmoil and violence that informs his writing and worldview.
“People live in these dystopias. How do we make sense of life?” Karunatilaka said. “The trope is that the hero flies away in a helicopter and writes a Pulitzer-winning article. But what about the guy who’s waving at the helicopter? His story is interesting. Someone should write that.”
Rather than feature police detectives, he has preferred to tell stories through the eyes of journalists and use satire to criticize politics and society. He prizes absurdism, “the throughline in my work,” and often “plays with reality” using the perspective of unsung heroes who are also unreliable narrators.
“You can still make jokes when you’re staring into the abyss,” he said. “Maybe it’s my warped sensibility. Maybe absurdism is the only plausible explanation I’ve caught onto as an accurate way to write about Sri Lanka.”
Karunatilaka described the difficult and sometimes “patronizing” process of rewriting “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” for Western audiences — that included the publisher changing the title from its original “A Chat with the Dead” to make it easier to market — but said working with a “brilliant editor” created the book’s definitive version.
Karunanayake, who is also Sri Lankan, was particularly interested in why the author used the second person point of view to tell “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.”
“What survives the death of your body? I thought it would be the voice in your head. For me, that’s in second person, telling me what I did wrong or what I should be doing,” Karunatilaka said. “Maybe I thought I could get away with more and include more between the lines, but honestly, it just felt right.”
Karunatilaka is the author of two novels, including “Chinaman,” the short story collection “The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises,” and several children’s books. As for his much-anticipated third novel?
“When you get down to writing, you have to shut out the noise. It’s you and the page and the words,” Karunatilaka said. “It won’t be easier to write, but I’ll find a story and attack it from every side.”