Mind Picker: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Please do not get lost. If you haven’t had an Ear Check, don’t come here. Level Forty-Two will be open tomorrow. Come back then. Remember you have seven moons. You must reach The Light before the last one rises.

I just barely squeaked in reading 2022’s winner of the Booker Prize (it took so long to be released here in Canada), and while I can see how the themes and writing in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida would have appealed to the Booker judges (and especially as its mordant tone in describing horrific political reality appears in other novels on this year’s shortlist), it wasn’t my personal favourite of this year’s list, nor even my favourite novel exploring Sri Lanka’s long years of deadly internal conflict (for that see Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost). It might be unfair to author Shehan Karunatilaka for me to rate this fine novel in comparison to others instead of solely on its own merits, but that was the experience its winning the Booker imposed on me, so all this is simply meant to explain why my reaction might be a bit muted. Seven Moons is undeniably good, probably not great, and four stars is a rounding up

Lankans can’t queue. Unless you define a queue as an amorphous curve with multiple entry points. This appears to be a gathering point for those with questions about their death. There are multiple counters and irate customers clamour over grills to shout abuse at the few behind the bars. The afterlife is a tax office and everyone wants their rebate.

The year is 1990 and Sri Lankan war photographer Maali Almeida learns he is dead when he finds himself in the chaos of a bureaucratic office with only one sandal on his feet and his camera lens cracked and filled with mud. From a Helper, he learns that he has seven moons (days) to make his way to the Light or risk being trapped in the In Between forever. As he finds his bearings, Maali is determined to get a message to his roommates — his best friend Jaki and her male cousin DD; Maali’s secret gay lover — and have them release a stash of photographs that would have been too dangerous for him to share while still alive. There’s a mystery/thriller vibe to this novel as Maali strains to remember the details that led to his death, and while the clock ticks down those seven moons, Maali finds himself torn between obeying the Helper who is encouraging him to go the the Light and a more nebulous creature who promises Maali revenge upon those who had hurt him (and the country as a whole) in life if he remains in the In Between.

Throughout, Maali’s remembered experiences as a photojournalist in the ‘80s — one who was willing to work for any of the alphabet soup of factions who paid the best in the moment — allows Karunatilaka to describe horrific scenes from Sri Lanka’s Civil War; and as Maali was a resident of the capital city, Colombo, Karunatilaka is able to immerse us in its unsettled setting of systemic corruption, massive income disparity, and rolling curfews. I appreciated that Maali’s afterlife is populated with unfamiliar-to-me creatures from Sri Lankan lore and details pulled from Buddhist belief. All of this was good stuff. On the other hand, I didn’t much care for the character of Maali himself: A gambling addict with Mommy issues and a self-described “slut”, I didn’t understand all the scenes of him being pleasured by pretty young men while holding conversations with other guys (not only was this meant to be blatantly provocative at the height of the AIDS scare while Maali assured DD that he was always faithful while on assignments, but as Karunatilaka thanked his wife during his Booker acceptance speech, I don’t think this was based on lived experience, and it kind of shows). Others have noted that this feels too long, and at nearly 400 pages, it really does; there is much repetition, and I don’t think it needed the gambling or Maali’s dramatic family of origin subplots. And as for the satiric tone, the vibe is more resigned than humourous:

• The Afterlife is as confusing as the Before Death, the In Between is as arbitrary as the Down There. So we make up stories because we’re afraid of the dark.

• You hover above him, more like a mosquito than angel. The mosquitoes are said to have killed half of everyone who has ever lived. A lot more than angels have saved.

• You used to make cracks about death when you considered it an unlikely event, as we all do, until we don’t.

• Magic isn’t evil or good. Or black or white. It is like the universe, like every missing God. Powerful and supremely indifferent.

• All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair. Many get luck, and many get misery. Many are born to homes with books, many grow up in the swamps of war. In the end, all becomes dust. All stories conclude with a fade to black.

Ultimately, this does feel like an important read: any light shone on a government controlling and killing its own people deserves to be amplified and I appreciate the craft and passion that Karunatilaka brought to this project. I am happy to have squeaked this in before the end of the year, if only to end it contemplating the following:

You think of dead lakes overflowing with corpses, of police stations where the rich lock up the poor, of palaces where those who follow orders torture those who refuse to. You think of distraught lovers, abandoned friends and absent parents. Of lapsed treaties and photographs that are seen and forgotten, regardless of the walls they hang on. How the world will go on without you and will forget you were even here. You think of the mother, the old man and the dog, of the things you did, or failed to do, for the ones you loved. You think about evil causes and about worthy ones. That the chances of violence ending violence are one in nothing, one in nada, one in squat.