Novel by Sri Lanka’s Shehan Karunatilaka wins Booker Prize

LONDON — Writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida,” a satirical “afterlife noir” set during Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war. The 47-year-old, who has also written journalism, children’s books, screenplays and rock songs, is the second Sri Lanka-born Booker Prize winner, after Michael Ondaatje, who took the trophy in 1992 for “The English Patient.” Karunatilaka received the award from Camilla, Britain’s queen consort, during a ceremony at London’s Roundhouse concert hall. “It’s our coping mechanism,” he said, and expressed hope that his novel about war and ethnic division would one day be “in the fantasy section of the bookshop.” Former British Museum director Neil MacGregor, who chaired the judging panel, said judges chose the book for “the ambition, the scope and the skill, the daring, the audacity and the hilarity of the execution.” “It’s a book that takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through life and death, right to what the author describes as the dark heart of the world,” MacGregor said. “And there the reader finds to their surprise, joy, tenderness, love and loyalty.” The winner was chosen over five other finalists: American authors Percival Everett for “The Trees” and Elizabeth Strout for “Oh William!”; “Glory” by Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo; Irish writer Claire Keegan’s “Small Things Like These;” and “Treacle Walker” by British writer Alan Garner.