The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida x Shehan Karunatilaka
A contender for Best Read of 2023.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fiction
📖 388
My reading goal for 2023 is not a number, but quality. I wanted to have the space to read deeper, richer books. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida absolutely fit the bill.
In just under 400 pages, Shehan Karunatilaka dances with topics of racism, sexism, homophobia, spirituality, and colonialism as the writing teleports the reader to 1990 Colombo during the civil war. The main character, a war photographer named Maali Almeida, has been killed and awakes in the afterlife.
“The afterlife is a tax office and everyone wants their rebate.”
In Karunatilaka’s afterlife, our main character, Maali Almeida has one week (seven moons) to learn the circumstance of his death. What unfolds is comical, dark, and writhing in contempt.
“Is there a collective noun for suicides? An overdose of suicides? A hara-kiri of suicides?”
The storytelling was at times reminiscent of Southern US crime novels, like S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, plagued by political wrongdoings, flawed justice systems, racism, and homophobia. And like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, there is a spiritual connection to time, death, and possibility that pulls the narrative forward. Though unlike either of these, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida contains a rawness of the atrocities of a country in the middle of a multi-party civil war.
“1983 was an atrocity, eight thousand homes, five thousand shops, a hundred and fifty thousand homeless, no official body count.”
As an outsider, I do not have a full understanding of the geo-political environment of Sri Lanka. There are people, like actor Vijaya Kumaratunga, and cultural-isms such as betel chewing, that I can not fully grasp. One of the things that was so well done in this book is that it creates opportunities to understand, learn, and ask questions.
In that same light, Karunatilaka’s is not shy about colonialism’s impact on Sri Lanka,
“The World Bank and the Dutch government once donated money towards rebuilding these canals. A bulk of it ended up in well-stitched pockets. A feasibility study was rejected and filed next to plans for unbuilt highways and skyscrapers. In Sri Lanka, everything is built by the lowest bidder or, most profitably, not at all.”
As if the challenges of living during a civil war are not enough, Almeida is gay in a conservative society. A gay man living during the AIDS crisis and an identity-based civil war adds a whole new level of complexity. Here, we see Karunatilaka using humor again to cope,
"Usually, when you brought women home, which was about as frequent as a free and fair election...
and to comment on masculinity and male rage,
“You told him how circumcision at birth instills rage in the subconscious and makes men violent.”
As if this book was not packed enough, it also expresses beautiful, and occasionally unpleasant, ideas of the afterlife. Karunatilaka’s afterlife is one where souls ride winds “Like public transport for dead people,” although only allowing one to travel to where the body or corpse has been. The supernatural shines through most vividly as Almeida encounters the Mahakali, the Hindu goddess of time and death.
Almeida’s journey is a post-life quest, a demanding reflection and confrontation of how he played the hand he was dealt, all before making one final play.