Shehan Karunatilaka’s ’’The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’’ longlisted for 2022 Booker Prize

Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka's novel "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" has been long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize. 

This is the second successive year that a Sri Lankan author has been nominated for the prestigious award, after Anuk Arudpragasam's "A Passage North" was shortlisted for the prize last year. 

"Life after death in Sri Lanka: an afterlife noir, with nods to Dante and Buddha and yet unpretentious. Fizzes with energy, imagery and ideas against a broad, surreal vision of the Sri Lankan civil wars. Slyly, angrily comic," was how the 2022 Booker Prize judges described the novel. 

Karunatilaka is among 13 authors whose works made it to this year's Booker longlist. This year's longlist contains both the youngest and oldest authors ever to be nominated for the award. 

The full longlist:

NoViolet Bulawayo, “Glory”

Hernan Diaz, “Trust”

Percival Everett, “The Trees”

Karen Joy Fowler, “Booth”

Alan Garner, “Treacle Walker”

Shehan Karunatilaka, “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”

Claire Keegan, “Small Things Like These”

Graeme Macrae Burnet, “Case Study”

Audrey Magee, “The Colony”

Maddie Mortimer, “Maps of our Spectacular Bodies”

Leila Mottley, “Nightcrawling”

Selby Wynn Schwartz, “After Sappho”

Elizabeth Strout, “Oh William!”