![]() Karunatilaka first published the book in India under the title Chats with the Dead, but Western publishers mostly passed on the novel because they believed it would be inaccessible to Western readers. ![]() I think other Western readers may have difficulty with the book, as I did: with some of the unfamiliar history, culture and even its language, perhaps even with narrative style. Nevertheless, I think I had some legitimate issues with the novel, too. I began another book I enjoyed more, and I never seemed to quite get a good stretch of time to read this one. As a caveat, I admit that my reading of the novel was quite distracted. It failed to draw me in as fiction, even though its background of civil war in Sri Lanka is important and of interest, in itself. But I found myself becoming impatient with it. Unfortunately, Karunatilaka’s winning novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, is one of only a few Booker prize winners I didn’t really enjoy, despite the overwhelming praise it has received: despite the fact that looking at it objectively, it is a good book. Shehan Karunatilaka is the second Sri Lankan to win the Booker prize (Michael Ondaatje won it in 1993 for The English Patient). ![]()
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