Mystery, ghosts, and a Booker win: Karunatilaka’s unexpected journey

The creative process is curious, and for 2022 Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, it held true to the adage of equal amounts of inspiration and perspiration.

He never set out to write a novel that would claim the accolade in the first place. It was happenstance good fortune, he said. 

“I thought I was just writing a murder mystery,” he said. His novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, tells the story of the ghost of a war photographer navigating a violent afterlife in Sri Lanka. The country’s civil war claimed his life, setting the novel against a backdrop of post-war uncertainty. Like many, Karunatilaka held hopes for national renewal.

“The war ended in 2009, and we thought it would be a new start for the country,” he said. “But what came after was more anger, much bickering, and unfulfilled promises.” It was during this turbulent socio-political period that a thought struck him: “What if the victims of Sri Lanka’s wars could tell their own stories?” 

Believe it or not, Karunatilaka first drafted Seven Moons as a completely different project, originally envisioning it as a ‘slasher horror’ set around the 2004 tsunami. He initially called it The Devil Dance. Something was amiss. He worked through years of revisions and rewrites, ultimately discarding entire drafts. “It’s heartbreaking to spend time on something and then realise it’s unsalvageable,” he said.

The ghost would not let go

Then, after three attempts, he decided to scrap it, but one character in the manuscript wouldn’t let go: a ghost on a bus named Maali Almeida. When he returned to the idea, kind of, in 2015, Almeida became the centre of the story. He was a war photographer given seven days to solve his murder.

“I realised this man had a story worth telling,” he said. And so, a new narrative was born, and a brand-new rewrite in which he brought the character to life, from a sideshow to the front and centre of the upgraded tale.

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It’s a book of haunted spirits. “Every ghost in Seven Moons is based on a real person or a real event from Sri Lanka’s past,” he said. Karunatilaka said he drew from the real-life conspiracies, assassinations, and terror attacks that were common in his country at the time. “The story unfolds in 1989, a time of political assassinations and disappearances,” he said. “But I focused on crafting a ghost story, not on delivering social commentary.”

Self-doubt crept in as he was writing.  He did not know whether audiences beyond Sri Lanka would connect with the story.“It’s a hard book to pitch, and I wondered, who outside South Asia is going to get this?” he said. Once published, the novel gained traction in India in early 2020, but international success remained uncertain. “There was some scepticism about how Western audiences would relate to it,” he said.

After struggling to find representation to take the book across the ocean, he ultimately connected with a small independent publisher willing to take a chance. “They saw potential but said it needed more work,” he said. “I spent another two years revising and reshaping it, bit by bit.”

A book of many origins

The timing, however, would work in his favour. As Sri Lanka plunged into fresh political and economic turmoil, the one-again-redrafted novel’s themes of memory, loss, and resilience struck a chord with readers worldwide. “People began drawing parallels between the story’s 1989 setting and today’s events,” he said. Karunatilaka again did not plan for his story to mirror unfolding events, but the alignment gave the book a measure of unforeseen weight.

Winning the Booker Prize was another outcome he also didn’t see coming. “When it made the longlist, I thought, well, at least it will get some reviews,” he said. Reaching the shortlist was even more surreal. “It then felt like a one-in-six chance,” he said, expecting another name to be called at the ceremony. “I’d prepared a few notes, just in case, but didn’t think I’d need them.” 

Local to global audience

The win catapulted Seven Moons onto the global stage with readers picking it up in places Karunatilaka never considered. “It’s now translated into 30-odd languages, and I’ve been on the road constantly for two years,” he said. “It’s surreal that readers in Ohio, Seattle, Cape Town know this story.” 

Karunatilaka said his next project is already in the pipeline. “The first book took four years, this one took seven, so I’d like to think the next will be quicker, but we’ll see,” he said. However, he described his creative process as patience and experimentation. “I am more of a gardener than an architect. I throw seeds around and see what takes root. It’s never fully planned, and I rarely know the ending when I start,” he said.

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