An Instant National Bestseller • One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2022 • An NPR Book We Loved in 2022 • Named a Best Fiction Book of 2022 by the Washington Post, Times (UK), Financial Times, and The Guardian. Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a searing satire set amid the mayhem of the Sri Lankan civil war. Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka. Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire” (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.

If nothing else, Seven Moons left NUBClub curious and ready to talk. Set in Sri Lanka in 1990, Seven Moons follows the story of Maali Almeida, a photojournalist killed by unknown forces as he tries as a ghost to complete a final action on Earth, displaying the truly powerful and controversial photos he has been hoarding before seven moons pass and he must make a decision about his afterlife. There is a really interesting view of the afterlife here, one that's consumed with the same kinds of inefficient bureaucracies, manipulative leaders, and injustice that existed in the living world. We mostly like that take on death, although different members of NUBClub had questions about particular aspects of the cosmology that they felt the author didn't adequately explain. Why did Maali not remember so much of his death until days later? Why were animals conscious? Why were ears the thing that were always the consistent way to read someone? Most of us didn't have an issue with these factors, chalking them up as creative calls that Karunatilaka could make as he wanted, but some of them (such as the Crow Man, a human who could talk to ghosts) were a bridge too far for individual readers. What we noted though was that for all the weird movement of the story of ghosts following winds as their names are mentioned and strange memories coming and going, the plot actually follows a traditional redemption path of Maali trying to do something politic, then realizing it's his friends (as manifested in the kidnapping of Jaqi over the photos he's been trying to expose) that matter and trying to act to protect them and other innocents leads him to the ability to change and move on to the next step in the afterlife. We talked a lot about how realizing that his photos were not going to change the world was critical to his salvation, especially as contrasted with Sena and the other spirits interested in getting revenge on the living. We loved the scene when Maali and Sena both try to manipulate a human as he weighs detonating a bomb that would kill a political enemy. Sena in particular is a terrific metaphor for the violence of Sri Lanka, a character that simply won't change or stop fighting even though the stakes and results no longer matter. We also talked a lot about tone in the novel, specifically about how and where the atrocities of the political violence appeared. Maali seemed to us a great lens on the conflict, someone who witnessed the true horrors and injustices but also used gambling and random hook-ups to cope and relieve the stress. The book was just genuine funny in places and that's a fascinating position for a work about such a dark topic. In the end, we agreed that Seven Moons was a worthy winner of the Man Booker. Even with the criticisms of some, we recognized the deftness with which the novel told a story about the importance of humanity in the face of horror and found a unique voice for that tale. It's a weird and scattered journey, but it's a fun ride that ends well, so it gets our recommendation.