Lead Review (The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida)

• Book: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
• Location: Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Author: Shehan Karunatilaka

Review Author: Tina Hartas

I took this in audiobook format with to Sri Lanka, with the specific intention of reading it on the island. I felt from what I had read that it would offer insight into the atrocities amid the civil war of the 1980s and thus, sitting on a train, watching the scenery fly past (well, dawdle past), listening to the story, I anticipated gaining an extra dimension on what I was seeing through the window; as well as enjoying a good story.

This is jaunty storytelling (heightened by the lilting voice of Shivantha Wijesinha) has a ghost at the heart. Maali has been murdered and he intends to find out who killed him. He is in a nether world. In his life, he was closet gay, with a boyfriend back in Colombo. He was a photographer with little moral compass, a committed gambler and generally colourful personality. He has seen the vice and corruption and has a stash of photographs which somehow need to get printed and out into the world.

It is a tome that doesn’t stop to take breath, it left me at times a little confused because it exuberantly introduces a multitude of characters who add colour to the narrative but can also feel a bit overwhelming. I guess one just has to look at the colours on the book cover to understand that this will be a vibrant read.

It is fantastical story that will turn your head, inform and tease. You may be left wondering what it is exactly you have read once you have finished it. It is another novel with ghostly ambitions endeavouring to highlight some of the ills in society, like 10 minutes, 38 seconds of Elif Shafak, Lincoln in Bardo by George Saunders and Eternal City by Mark Thompson.

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