Sri Lankan Author Wins Booker’s Prize Celebrating Homosexuality Of 19th Century

Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has made headlines again as he wins his second Booker’s Prize award.

As Sri Lanka braves its economic spiral and lost economy, a president that ran away deserting it to all these miseries, the literary art it holds has won and excelled. Celebrating gender diversity, the book talks about a gay war photographer’s personal journey and struggle. Titled The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida, the novel is essentially set in 1990s, another statement to make about the emergence of homosexuality much before it has started to get acceptance here in the world.

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The novel is set in Sri Lanka’s civil war, where the main character Maali Almeida wakes up dead with no idea who has killed him. The gay war photographer and gambler has “seven moons” to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will shock the country.

In his acceptance speech that happened in London earlier this week, Karunatilaka said: “My hope for Seven Moons is that in the not-too-distant future… it is read in a Sri Lanka that has understood that these ideas of corruption, race baiting and cronyism have not worked and will never work.

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Mr. Karunatilaka was awarded with a £50,000 by the new Queen Consort in London recently as well.

The author added, “I hope it is read in a Sri Lanka that learns from its stories and that Seven Moons will be in the fantasy section of the bookshop and will… not be mistaken for realism or political satire.”

Judges chair Neil MacGregor said: “This is a metaphysical thriller, an afterlife noir that dissolves the boundaries not just of different genres, but of life and death, body and spirit, east and west.