The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan KarunatilakaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
“You know why the battle of good vs evil is so one-sided? Because evil is better organized, better equipped, and better paid. It is not monsters or yakas or demons we should fear. Organized collectives of evil doers who think they are performing the work of the righteous. That is what should make us shudder.”
In the Booker we trust.
THE SEVEN MOONS OF MAALI ALMEIDA, on its own, is something I would never have considered reading, if not for the fact that it won the Booker Prize in 2022. And I realize it comes across as snobbish, but honestly, it’s just a function of my limited teacher’s salary budget on books! It’s a huge help to have a trusted prize winning body like the Booker committee separate the kanin from the bigas, and say, this is worth your time and money.
Why would I have decided against reading TSMOMA if left to my own devices? In my ignorance, I thought it too foreign. The blurb told me the protagonist was a homosexual gambler involved in politics during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Sinhalese by blood, though neither Hindu nor Buddhist in practice, Maali Almeida describes himself on page 1 as “Photographer. Gambler. Slut.”
But the weight of the prize lent the book a golden hue, as well as my own many happy experiences with Booker winners past. And despite my thinking that I had nothing in common with this character, I opened the book and found myself moved to tears by its profound end hours later, my poor coffee left untouched as I was too rapt to drink.
For Maali Almeida was all these things, yes. But he was a war photographer on a mission. He took photos of atrocities committed in the name of peace. He took pictures that, when seen, would make his country burn.
“I was there to witness… All those sunrises and all those massacres existed because I filmed them.”
I read this on November 1, the day we remember our dead.
Almeida begins the novel as a spirit, freshly dead but unable to remember why and how. He realizes that the disorganized bureaucracy that haunted his native Colombo in life is still how it is (dis)organized in death, and tries to choose between those spirits egging him to find his killers and deal them justice from beyond the grave, and those who invite him to find the light.
He only has seven moons to solve his untimely murder at the age of 35, and make peace with his less-than-ideal life and loves left behind.
I would have been OK if I never read this book. But then, I wouldn’t have known the literary horizon that got extended because of this remarkable novel, and my life would have been the poorer for it.
If I hadn’t read this, I would never have been struck with awe by author Shehan Karunatilaka’s accomplishment: summarizing Sri Lanka’s violent and messy history in one book, making something so contemporary transcend the boundaries of time and place, striking deeply into the heart of our universal longing for life and death to have meaning.
It’s troubling yet transcendent, painful yet profoundly healing. And I’ve read enough crap to realize how rare this is, and what a blessing it is when such a book is found and read.
It offers answers to all people, of all faiths (or none). Despite its unflinching take on the horrors of modern murder and torture, the appalling truths of state-sponsored violence, it manages to show a way forward, without coming across as peddling religious panaceas to political upheaval.
The way forward, Karunatilaka seems to say, lies in our ability to choose. To forgive or to revenge. To enable or resist. To exist without a cause, or to live fighting for a righteous one.
But always, always, to choose life above all. To choose saving innocent lives above politics.
I’m glad the Booker chose this book, which led to me reading it. This was a November 1 to remember.
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