Booker Prize 2022: Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka wins with supernatural satire

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, a supernatural satire acceptable amid a murderous Sri Lankan civilian war, has won the Booker Prize.

The Sri Lankan writer's novel is astir a lensman who wakes up dead, with a week to inquire his friends to find his photos and exposure the brutality of war.

Camilla, the Queen Consort, presented the prize, portion caput justice Neil MacGregor said they admired the book's "daring and hilarity".

Pop vocalist Dua Lipa was the prima guest.

She made a code talking astir her "passion" for reading, calling it "one of the astir profound joys successful the world".

The singer-songwriter, who was the UK's most-played creator of 2020, said she had work each six shortlisted books, and "absolutely loved it". She besides recommends publication she loves connected societal media.

The prestigious £50,000 prize, for a azygous enactment of fabrication published successful the UK successful English, besides gives the different 5 writers connected the shortlist £2,500 each.

Alan Garner, 1 of the shortlisted authors, turned 88 connected the time of the ceremony, and the assemblage sang "Happy Birthday" to him, led by Dua Lipa.

MacGregor called the winning publication an "afterlife noir" which "takes the scholar connected a rollercoaster travel done beingness and death", adding: "We deliberation it's a publication that volition last.

He added the judges' determination had been unanimous, and that each of the shortlisted books were "all truly astir 1 question, and that is what's the constituent of an idiosyncratic life?"

Karunatilaka told the Booker website that "despite having a grim past and a troubled present, Sri Lanka is not a dour oregon depressing place".

"Sri Lankans specialise successful gallows humour... laughter is intelligibly our coping mechanism," helium said.

He is the 2nd second Sri Lankan-born writer to triumph the Booker Prize pursuing Michael Ondaatje successful 1992.

Karunatilaka decided to constitute "a shade communicative wherever the dormant could connection their perspective" successful 2009 aft the extremity of the Sri Lankan civilian war, "when determination was a raging statement implicit however galore civilians died and whose responsibility it was".

Dua Lipa spoke astir the value of books successful her life, telling the BBC's Rebecca Jones that speechmaking "helps maine navigate done beingness and recognize emotions and feelings, it's my solace".

She besides spoke astir however arsenic a child, speechmaking Roald Dahl's The Twits - astir a joined mates who despise each different - she had realised: "OK, that's a small pearl of contented of however you should be, successful bid to not extremity up similar that."

Enjoying books during her aboriginal puerility successful Kosovo, had besides helped "connect maine with my Albanian roots", she added.

by Rebecca Jones, arts correspondent

Where to commencement with this crazy, exuberant metaphysical whodunnit which is portion execution mystery, portion comedy?

Imagine combining brownies, trifle and doughnuts into 1 azygous barroom and you mightiness get the idea.

But Shehan Karunatilaka mixes antithetic genres truthful deftly that you extremity up with a rich, satisfying novel, alternatively than an overstuffed one.

The opening of the publication sets the somewhat absurd tone. It starts successful the afterlife, which turns retired to beryllium bureaucratic and banal.

It past flips backmost and distant betwixt the underworld and the existent satellite during the Sri Lankan civilian warfare successful 1990 arsenic Maali Almeida tries to enactment retired who killed him - and why.

Shehan Karunatilaka says the publication has been successful his caput for 10 years and goodness his encephalon indispensable person been busy.

But helium struggled to find an planetary publisher.

Winning the Booker volition bring this dazzling novel, deservedly, to a overmuch wider audience.

The Seven Moons of Maali is Karunatilaka's 2nd novel, having antecedently won awards including the Commonwealth Book Prize for his debut publication Chinaman, which was called the "second champion cricket publication of each time" by cricketers' almanac Wisden.

Born successful 1975, the writer has besides worked arsenic an advertizing copywriter, and his songs, scripts and stories person been published successful Rolling Stone, GQ and National Geographic.

MacGregor, a erstwhile manager of London's National Gallery and the British Museum, added that the judges work each 170 books enactment guardant for the prize, past whittled them down to 30 and re-read those, earlier deciding connected the last six, which they work for a 3rd time.

When asked by the BBC however galore hours helium had spent speechmaking novels for the prize, MacGregor said: "I've been doing it astir each week since aboriginal December... It's tons and tons of blessed reading.

"There's nary different mode I would ever person travel crossed arsenic galore books from antithetic places, antithetic cultures."