A Srilankan war photographer Mali Almeida wakes up struggling to accept that he is dead. The shocked Mali is not able to figure out who killed him, how and why. The winner of the 2022 Booker prize, the fascinating novel ‘ The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida’ by Shehan Karunatilaka is the story of a Srilankan photographer who is already dead and wakes up in what seems to be a celestial visa office. Mali is given seven nights or ‘seven moons’, to stay with this life before his immersion into the hereafter.
To make the maximum of these seven nights he embarks on a mission to reveal the truth behind the unabated atrocities inflicted upon the people during that period of 1980’s in Srilanaka.
With Mali’s dismembered body is still sinking in Beira Lake, Mali doesn’t know who killed him. The novel portrays an account of the atrocities and war crimes executed in Srilanka in 1980’s, during which scores were killed through murders and suicide bombing . Mali is left with very less time i.e. seven nights only to find out his lover Dian and his friend Jake, so that he could lead them to the pictures that might reveal the gruesome realities in the war torn Srilanka.
In a brief manner a murdered Sri Lankan photojournalist strives to put his afterlife to good use.
The novel is set in Srilanka and begins with the character of Maali in a post-mortem waiting room. where he is given seven moons (i.e., nights) to remain on Earth as a ghost before entering his next life. There are so many questions unanswered for Mali. How was he killed? Who killed him? What has happened to his lover, and his best friend.
Mali as a ghost struggles to lead his lover and friend to reveal to them the location of the photos he shot that would unfold the ghastly tale of the war-torn island’s atrocities. Karunatilaka’s novel can be called a murder mystery and a historical novel of the island nation’s violent struggles throughout the ’80’s.
The novel thus involves a host of cultural and political dissent which also includes the outside forces from India and the United States. During these seven nights which Mali has been given on the earth, before he embraces his afterlife, he navigates otherworldly ghosts, and spirits. However adding to the thrill of its readers, the novel afloats with its plot keeping its readers clung. It hovers on to the riots and state-sponsored killings and ghastly violations, Mali strives to expose as a ghost.
