by Shehan Karunatilaka
This book won the Booker Prize this year. I can certainly understand why it was selected.
It was a very creative, powerful, commentary on the conflict in Sri Lanka.
The main character Maali is killed. He is a photographer, a gambler, and a closet queen. He can't remember how or why he died.He finds himself in a nether region where he is told he has seven days to do what? Not sure? But his main goal becomes contacting two close friends to get them to display photos he has taken which he hopes will rock Sri Lanka.
Mention is made of going into the light. What is the light... he gets different answers: heaven, rebirth, oblvion.
Maali was not a very principled person in life. He gambled a lot, took photos for anyone in the Sri Lankan conflict who would pay him, the government, ngo's or the "terrorists". He even took photos of things he knew were not true, for example some rural people are massacred and dressed in uniforms of one of the rebel fighters.
He is having a homo sexual relationship with a young man who asks him to be faithful and he says he is, but that is a lie. There is a young woman, a friend he lives with, along with the young man, who seems interested in him but he won't tell her he is gay. He promises his lover to go away to a place where they can live safely, but he never follows through with that.
As Maali travels in the netherworld he finds he can fly on the wind and get to places he has been before including his family home, his own home, etc. He meets ghouls and other ghosts and ghosts who claim to be there to guide and assist him. Can he trust them?
As the days pass he comes to remember that he was killed by some thugs and his body dismembered with his head thrown into a river/pond (like others have been disposed of) and his body bagged and disposed of elesewhere.
His friends and family report him missing and seek the help of two police officers who agree to look for him once some money crosses their palms. Eventually he is able to put ideas into his friends heads so that they can find the photos he has stashed away.
At one point his girl friend is arrested by officials and is taken to a building where she is going to be tortured. Through his intersessions he is able to get her out before she is hurt.
But the government officials take the photos from them. Eventually he is able to tell them where he has the negatives for the photos and the friends make copies of the photos and put them on display. Some photos he didn't plan to have displayed (of gay lovers) also end up on the walls. People come to see the photos including goverment officials who take some of them away. The pictures obviously do not have the desired effect he expected.
At one point in the book a person decides to take a bomb to the government building where people are tortured. Maali doesn't want the bomb to be set off as innocent people as well as the bad guys will be killed but the explosion occurs. It is around this time that Maali learns that the father of his lover, a goverment official, is the one who had him killed becasue he didn't want his son in a homosexual relationship.
As the seventh moon approaches Maali is given a choice to drink from one of several cups. One would take him to the light, one would take him wherever he was needed, I can't remember what the options were. He chooses to be where needed and becomes a greeter to the dead where he helps someone. He is then offered another drink and decides to stay as a helper.
This book was very diffiult to read at times because of the violence but it was amazing the world of the dead that was created and how the author developed the story as Maali regained his memory of his death. In the end he seems to have transitioned from a very unprinciped, unethical, totally self-centred waste of space to someone who truly cared about others and wanted to help them.
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