An audio book.
It's a whodunnit where the second-person POV murder victim is a ghost who's forgotten the moments before his death. Comedy and Politics are included in the mix.
It’s 1975, Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers are about. When Maali realises he’s dead, in limbo, he thinks "So there is an afterlife". He was a photographer, gay, keen on gambling. He's described as a "dinner party activist". He's proud that he worked for anyone. He doesn’t recall his death. He sees his body in pieces, with other bodies. There’s admin to do within 7 days otherwise he'll never be able to move on to "The Light". They’re short of staff and are seeking volunteers. He learns the rules – about how to travel, etc. He's jumped from place to place (conveniently). He’s told not to visit cemeteries. He follows relatives and police to see what happened to him - thrown off a hotel balcony? He sees other ghosts. He doesn't want to leave until he finds out how he died, and gets the negatives of the photos to the right people. He learns how to whisper to the living, and influence their dreams.
Dr Rani is his guide. He knows her from his previous life - she used some of his photos without permission. Under his bed he has some incriminating photos from the 1983 riots. A Canadian-backed charity would like the photos. He used to live with Jackie – a relationship of convenience. He has a friend whose trait is "weaponising politeness as well as any Englishman"
Suicides and scholars try to convince him about the pros about cons of limbo. One suicider said that reincarnation was cheaper than paying for a sex-change, and that staying in limbo suited him - he'd always been an inbetweener.
When he discovers that Jackie was interrogated, he sells his soul to get her freed.
I think it could be shortened by 20% (the final 30 minutes for example don't feel effective) but it mostly manages to combine its genres successfully.
Other reviews
- Tomiwa Owolade
- Frank Lawton (For worlds like Karunatilaka’s to work, an author must set governing rules, so that the fantastic is not used as an easy trick to just magic away plot problems. Karunatilaka does briefly fall into this trap, with a new rule, discovered two-thirds of the way through and leading to an important plot development a few pages later, feeling overly convenient. But generally, his creation is hard won ... Some critics have seen The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida as a purely dystopian satire. But this misses the hope at the book’s core. For Karunatilaka also satirises those who see the world as a flat, material place without deeper meaning. ... Witty, inventive and moving, Karunatilaka’s prose is gloriously free of cliché, and despite the apparent cynicism of his smart-alec narrator, this is a deeply moral book that eschews the simple moralising of so much contemporary fiction. )
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