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The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises
'It's a simple car bomb, and it's rigged to a busload of schoolgirls. No one knows it is there except for me.'
Unpleasant truths await a Sri Lankan president in the back of a London cab. An advertising agency has to come to terms with a blown-up collection of pictures of its employees' penises. A man presumed missing, quietly journals by the sea. A being dispassionately recalls the numerous births it had taken and absurd fates it had to endure. An Englishman, a Dutchman and a Portuguese man walk into a Ceylon bar with grand narcotic designs.
A masterful blend of dry wit, morbid charm and earnest observations, Booker-shortlisted author Shehan Karunatilaka's The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises is a collection of fantastic short stories that serves up fantasies for both doomsday and everyday, marking the return of one of South Asia's most compelling storytellers.
Unpleasant truths await a Sri Lankan president in the back of a London cab. An advertising agency has to come to terms with a blown-up collection of pictures of its employees' penises. A man presumed missing, quietly journals by the sea. A being dispassionately recalls the numerous births it had taken and absurd fates it had to endure. An Englishman, a Dutchman and a Portuguese man walk into a Ceylon bar with grand narcotic designs.
A masterful blend of dry wit, morbid charm and earnest observations, Booker-shortlisted author Shehan Karunatilaka's The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises is a collection of fantastic short stories that serves up fantasies for both doomsday and everyday, marking the return of one of South Asia's most compelling storytellers.
257 pages, Hardcover
Published September 29, 2022
31 people are currently reading
844 people want to read
About the author
Shehan Karunatilaka
11 books1,118 followersShehan Karunatilaka lives and works in Singapore. He has written advertisements, rock songs, travel stories, and bass lines. This is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
March 24, 2023
"The malady may not be uniquely Lankan. Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin L. King are now signposts on dirty boulevards, sepia photos used to sell computers, postage stamps that we spit on. Their names are spoken, and their words are quoted while their ideas fester in the first world and rot in the third."
With Chats with the Dead, which I recently read, still fresh in my mind, I must say that The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises doesn't quite reach that height. I will not call it a mixed bag since I did like most of the stories, even the one-page insubstantials that strayed too close to regular flash fiction. There is an authorial smugness to Karunatilaka's writing, a call to attention, which can get overpowering in short pieces. Many of these stories over-rely on sleight of hand twists and reveals on the very last page that, as Tanuj Solanki points out, "feels like a clumsy trick."
There is some really interesting play with form and structure in these stories. "Easy Tiger" as a phone conversation or "No. One. Cares." which is entirely Facebook interactions come to mind; even "Assassin's Paradise which is just a series of prefaces to different editions of a fake book. There's a lot of that acerbic wit and the gallows humour that made Chats fun to read. The same can be said about phallic obsession, though it's hetero-centric here. Karunatilaka embodies the straight male mind, and its bodily obsessions, a little too well. Overall, a fun and enjoyable foray.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
December 19, 2022
I read The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises two weeks back and was completely blown away by the twisted and sometimes bizarre endings, the dark humor, the dry wit, and the clever writing. This is a collection of thirty fantastic short stories that begins with a guide by the author to help navigate through them. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across the guide in which the author classified his stories as 'stories with twists', 'tales where things happen', 'fiction where nothing happens', and many other unique but helpful categories. The one that caught my eye was 'stories that everyone hates', which he wrote for his title story, The Birth Lottery. At the heart of every story are Sri Lanka's turbulent history, politics, and culture. I, being a fan of stories with twists, started with them and I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed reading them! I started with Easy Tiger which is written as a conversation. It was after reading a couple of text messages that I was able to figure out the relationship between the sender and the receiver and OMG I lost count of the number of surprising twists it had. It felt like going on a rollercoaster! By the time I read the last text message, I was already in awe of the author's imagination and wit. Short Eats, Black Jack, and Second Person, also had equally twisted endings. I was completely hooked and finished reading them in a few minutes only. Baby Monitor and Easy Tiger were two of my favorites from this category! I also loved the story, No One Cares, but for a very different reason. What started as a youngster's attempt at expressing his heartbreak and seeking online attention, ended with him demonstrating one of the biggest problems- how the truth rarely reaches the masses.
June 20, 2024
Overall really loved this book, Karunatilaka is incredibly witty. Some of the stories utterly failed to hit the mark for me though, but the ones that did were exceptional. solid 7/10
August 1, 2024
Everything the seven moons of maali almaida was and more.
The wit is incendiary like the explosives dealt amongst the army and LTTE. It is witty and tragic and real and true. He picks and pickles world affairs, extra marital affairs and serves you days and tales that under run every war, unreported, unheeded or neither but not as interesting as guns and blood. A slice of sri lankan psyche pre war, through it and post it. Talking about post its, some stories are just that, half a page, succinct and yet a relish at that last word. Birth lottery was a ride, start to finish and then some, I read it like a box of chocolates after lunch over a week. A guilty pleasure and worthwhile break. All the Love to the author's pen (or laptop).
The wit is incendiary like the explosives dealt amongst the army and LTTE. It is witty and tragic and real and true. He picks and pickles world affairs, extra marital affairs and serves you days and tales that under run every war, unreported, unheeded or neither but not as interesting as guns and blood. A slice of sri lankan psyche pre war, through it and post it. Talking about post its, some stories are just that, half a page, succinct and yet a relish at that last word. Birth lottery was a ride, start to finish and then some, I read it like a box of chocolates after lunch over a week. A guilty pleasure and worthwhile break. All the Love to the author's pen (or laptop).
December 7, 2024
Dealing with SK (Shehan Karunathilaka)
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My Life and Shehan Karunathilaka(SK)
My navigation of life with excessive personal life failures and book reading to fight through depression is countering loneliness. The role of SK's books in this context is the hype created in the public to his books since 2010 and after the 'Booker' win. Self-help and SK are like philosophy and real life. He reveals to us the modern-day paradoxes and mysteries of real life in a dystopian manner.
My attitude toward reading anything shows that reading self-help and feeling upset for being a failure and reading SK and feeling envious of not having fun is a part of my lonely life now.
I'm not in a position to read books or at least review them. Unfortunately, I am doing it to reduce stress and to avoid my past failures and it is relaxing. And it updates my perspective.
Reading SK in 2023 and 2024 after a turbulent time since 2019 in Sri Lanka and also having a turbulent personal life as a reader unveils the readers of his books and myself as well to the realities of contemporary Sri Lanka since the 1980s.
After the Easter Sunday Bombings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic crisis Sri Lanka is with a new political leadership after 76 years since independence.
Hence Sri Lanka has many stories to tell.
SK's writing and fiction are sarcastic, witty, and haunting.
SK is many things in one. He is an author, marketer, and a musician.
He only wrote a few books. They are as follows.
(01) Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010)
(02) Chats with the Dead [CWTD] (2020) and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [TSMOMA] (2022)
(03) The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises [TBL&OS] (2022)
SK wrote some children's books as well and the links for the relevant review are given below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My review will be mostly personal reflections and criticisms since for me reading is a personal journey inwards into the personal life of a human through another person into another perspective.
And also this review will be a combined review of his three fiction books for adults and will not analyze or review the books separately.
I have been obsessed with art since a child and I even did Art and English Literature for General Certificate of Education (G.C.E.) Ordinary Level (O/L) in the Sri Lankan education system and got through them with 'A' passes in 2007. I did G.C.E. Advanced Level (A/L) in the commerce stream in 2010 but did many co-curricular and extra-curricular activities with a dream of creating artwork in the future.
I was marginally disqualified to a Sri Lankan campus and there onwards the downward spiral of my life begins. I got depressed. Followed many courses though didn't complete many and luckily ended up in a Licensed Commercial Bank. But I did watch many films and reviewed them in a blog. So I have been more of an 'Art' fan than a studious student since 2010.
I started a blog about book reading in 2017 and there was a post about the meaning of the word booker. The link is shared below and the text is given below.
Meaning of "Booker"
The meaning of "Booker" according to Collins Dictionary is..........
noun
1. a person who hires performers or performance companies
2. a bookkeeper
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My Sri Lankan English literature experience has been very superficial since 2010 and I liked how they represented westernization, Colombo, the high society of Sri Lanka and it was revealing.
A comment on my view of a poetry collection is shared below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My father purchased "Chinaman" in 2012 when I was doing Law in Colombo. I was depressed and kind of out of my mind those days so it was dusting in the tables and bookshelves at our home. I was not eager to read it.
My father thought it was a book about Chinese.
My copy is one of the oldest prints and one of the first editions of its kind.
I also purchased 'Chats with the Dead' (2020), the first version of TSMOMA (2022) in 2020. I wasn't eager to read it, either.
But when Shehan Karunathilaka won the Booker Prize in 2022 for his novel "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida", I was triggered to read it.
The Copy I have of "Chinaman" doesn't have all the awards it won or the praise by 'Salman Rushdie', It's that old.
Fragments of Cricket, Jokes, Philosophy, and the author's own views are visible when reading the novel.
I don't think people read after their twenties or after schooling because reading is actually boring. I was in the same mindset. But I changed with depression.
There was a certain hype for SK in Sri Lanka after the booker prize win.
Since book reading is a dying hobby and contemporaries would rather watch free YouTube, the impact of book writing on the world is obviously outdated. But since I was conditioned to reading I followed it up anyway. It was a good read. Screen time and reading have both of their shared negativities. So it's up to you to decide which is better.
I bought CWTD in 2020 just when it was released but was not interested in reading it until it won the Booker Prize in 2022 for TSMOMA.
There was an event organized by Sarsavi Bookshops - One Galle Face (OGF) branch on January 2023 and I participated in it just after the hype of 2022 Aragalaya which allowed participants to meet SK.
A brief summary of the event as a short note is given below with pictures as well.
10 am to 10. 24 am - I purchased a copy and waited in the audience until the event was set by the organizers.
10. 45 am - Shehan arrived.
Discussion points during the event
Intro. about Shehan Karunatilaka.
About the Booker Prize.
Studied English lit. Against the parent's wish.
He was interested in reading when he was young.
It is quite normal not to know what you are doing in your 20s.
1980's Sri Lankan English literature is not prominent. But after the gratien trust in the 1990 Sri Lankan English literature had a boost.
Advertising, music, and copyright have a shadow on the writing of Shehan Karunatilaka.
Fast-paced arc in the story. So much happening in the story.
Research related to the book. - > Dante's inferno, Eastern philosophy, and afterlife bureaucracy are self-made, his favorite part of writing.
Shehan's books are clearly not logical or sober sometimes. But they are narrative techniques to show you the nature of life in my opinion.
Why I think anyone would read a prize-winning book is that they know it is reviewed by the best authoritative figures globally for literature and hence it is something readable and valuable.
And I think as a Sri Lankan these books are something worthwhile.
Personal reflections on BOOKER win and SK's Fiction
It's a rare occasion according to my knowledge where a book has a rebirth with a different cover, title, and several amendments and goes to win the 'Booker' prize. It's a milestone achievement for Sri Lanka after 30 years (The English Patient)
I met SK in 2023 Jan, but read his first novel in 2023 Dec during my annual leave. I read TSMOMA in 2024 April during the Sinhala New Year holidays. SK is now a global phenomenon. Besides my life going haywire and my career at the brink of destruction as a banker, I thoroughly enjoyed the two eccentric protagonists of his two books.
The prices of the books changed drastically during the period of nomination and after the win. I purchased a copy when the book was shortlisted which was highly priced and later purchased a book at a book signing event where the prices were lower. Maybe to attract a larger readership. (Both purchased from SARASAVI)
A free illegal PDF was released and circulated on WhatsApp the day after the booker won. It improved the marketing of the book and created kind of a buzz.
Below is a post shared on SK's social media pages related to the above matter.
when I first met SK in 2023 Jan. I hadn't read any of his fiction. I was inspired and interested in his win in the Booker Prizes 2022. He was on a book tour in Sri Lanka and had a discussion in Sarasavi OGF. It was free and many other advertised book reading and discussion events were ticket based. I went on the train and went to the event and got the book signed. SK seems like a down-to-earth guy. And talented with his words. This is where I bought the lower-priced version of his book.
Chinaman and TSMOMA were read at a pivotal time in my country and my personal life. Both shed light on the current negative state of the country's violent politics and the breaking down of SLC (Sri Lanka Cricket).
Thematically I don't think SK is traditional literature and I think he is more of a contemporary figure who is changing the course of fiction.
SK rejects traditional storytelling and his trademark is innovative storytelling techniques and new narrative styles.
One of the major aspects I noticed of SK and his fiction is the clash with the traditional norms of society.
As a conservative, traditional, introvert who lives in suburban Gampaha, this novel and the protagonist was a hectic and eccentric reading experience.
As a person who reads for the sake of reading and who prefers safety and conservatism, SK is not your traditional author.
As a blind follower of self-help and also of fiction books because they reflect reality, according to Stephen Covey (Renowned self-help author) everything you do should be based on a 'win-win' situation. How I made SK's fiction reading a win-win by enjoying the language and his talented words.
What SK is doing through his fiction is unmasking Sri Lanka from his own perspective.
Many of his books reveal the cautionary nature of the human tendency to have too much fun.
The pulp literature vibe of SK is far ahead since he can mix many aspects of life and its meanings to the readers with the Sri Lankan 'third class' or petty experiences.
MOTM and TSMOMA both published in 2022 are a counter-cultural attack on the Buddhist and the religious aspects of Sri Lanka by being manipulative and independent in both history and concepts.
A review of MOTM is shared below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
As Buddhists in Sri Lanka, many tend to print Buddhist books for free as a sharing of Buddhist knowledge during Buddhist sermons at their homes. My family also did it once for an almsgiving of one of my grandparents. Many books elaborate on merits to be done to get rid of a bad birth in next life or the ways of stopping rebirth. This book is a countercultural punch for the modern and post-modern (philosophically) Buddhists and allows a rethinking of what life has to offer as a ghost through fiction.
Diaspora loves this book because of its Westernized content and the posh protagonist. And also the anti-Sri Lankan army sentiment of the novel. Sri Lankan Diaspora has increased in number with the large number of people leaving since 2020.
Readers meet the characters of Chinaman in TSMOMA.
In the book Chinaman English book and the Sinhala translation there was a slight difference in adding a picture in the inception of each chapter.
TSMOMA novel created a resurgence of the memories of my visit to Helga's Folly anti-hotel residence in Kandy, the English film Ghost (1990), the Sinhalese teledrama Giju from 1992, and the Sinhalese film U-TURN (2019).
After watching Ted-Ed videos I was exposed to the literary techniques of Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe which are also present in TSMOMA.
While being spiritual and magical about both cricket, life, and the afterlife the fiction of SK also unveils us to the negative energy that drives the Colombo urban world is magically reflected by the author in his two books. This is a great book to enjoy the sub-cultural and counter-cultural aspects of Colombo. But the length of both books is very intimidating.
Chinaman and TSMOMA do focus on the meaninglessness of our value systems.
TSMOMA is comparatively different but is kind of a cunning marketing of a Sri Lankan political disaster to sell it as a detective story and a social commentary and put SK in the global literary spotlight.
SK is a marketeer so his playing with words is obviously powerful and it is evident when reading the book.
One of the biggest problems that occurred to me during the hype of the book was did TSMOMA triggered officials to find the criminals of the Sri Lankan past?
I also drafted a story of an incident in the Sri Lankan 1980s and I really enjoyed playing cricket when I was young.
The below link is the draft of my short story.
'The Fascist'
https://daysofmylifeupdated.blogspot.......
Due to my depression, I felt alienated and TSMOMA felt mutual. During 2017 before the publication of this book I had the urge to go inside the Lionel Wendt and Galle Face Courts to check, which I actually did.
There are a lot of half-truths about places, people, and scenarios of the SL past in this book and that is the iconic style of SK.
E.g.:- Politicians, Galle face Courts, Lionel Wendt
My opinion on the 'Aragalaya' 2022 was negative. But in 2024 the results have been fulfilled by the people mandate and it shows that it was fruitful.
Many Sri Lankan artists supported the Aragalaya or the struggle during the year 2022 and SK also supported it during an interview in the US. His book reflects Sri Lankan political turmoil during the 1980's and 1990's. His booker win was dedicated to a peaceful Sri Lanka during his acceptance speech. This is the first time a Sri Lankan has won a booker price and the hype created during the year 2022 September was immense. Hence I was obsessed with the celebrity status of this writer and purchased many of his books during that period.
The below youtube video shows SK and his support for Aragalaya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wys4...
Nationalists despise this book. It was evident in many social media platforms as well as the literature circles in Sri Lanka. There were a lot of negative criticisms of this book and also blamed it for being actual literature.
below are some links.
https://www.lankaweb.com/.../booker-p...
https://www.lankaweb.com/.../booker-p...
https://www.lankaweb.com/.../seven-mo...
https://www.colombotelegraph.com/.../...
https://literaryreview.co.uk/dead-man...
book released during the Aragalaya protests in 2022 was a social protest magical realism novel depicting the dark past of SL. But it supports MR and also has a black-humor vibe.
The novel had artificial hype and a big discourse surrounding creating SK into a celebrity globally.
But in my opinion, I like his books.
When studying the narrative threads of Sri Lanka it was obvious that simple interpretations of the Sri Lankan psyche presented by SK is much more truer than Many of the other SL writers present to SL readers and audiences. Hence I feel like adding his two novels to the Sri Lankan education system would be a better to give a broader perspective for SL literature students.
purposely being superficial about Sri Lankan aspects and cultural aspects does make it unique. It's like a reflection of the Sri Lankan middle class and the high-class societies.
selfish attitudes of the Sri Lankan middle class are exposed sarcastically in this book. It was what drove the modern world after the 1950s in the local and foreign context.
The way SK drafted his characters is cartoonish and one-dimensional which makes his fiction colorful.
Controversial nature is embedded in this novel. I get the same feeling of disgust for relying on the Westernization of this novel as I felt when reading 'Thambi Mudiyanse' which was vice-versa. The link for the review of 'Thambi Mudiyanse' is shared below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com...
TSMOMA can be considered in the subgenre of 'queer literature'. The novel TSMOMA is not for the faint of heart. It is vulgar and scary.
Much of SK's fiction focuses on dysfunctional family dynamics which will be a very good learning experience for unmarried and younger readers during schooling and their twenties.
My Booker prize-winning reading experiences are as follows.
(01) The English Patient : Michael Ondaatje sinhalese translation as ආගන්තුක රොගියා : පරිවර්තනය : කේ. එන්. ඕ. පේරේරා
(02) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
(03) TSMOMA by SK
SK and his selling of high-priced Sri Lankan English literature books by creating a big book-selling business show his skills in bookselling. I was also attracted to this marketing.
SK does not focus on the lives of the lower tiers of Sri Lanka or the village life. Rather he only focuses on the upper middle class and high class Sri Lankan social tiers.
SK's fiction is illogical and unsober. Filled with meaninglessness. Authoritative and clear but due to the illogical nature of the story and the endless writing book becomes filled with unnecessary facts.
book exposes the readers to the worst thoughts of a human being and it shows that it would have been banned in Sri Lanka. But it is not. It is one of the darkest aspects of human nature revealed by the author.
This fiction especially TSMOMA and TBL&OS can be considered as a black hole of SK taking your positivity about being stuck in Sri Lanka away from you.
SK expands his universe in his new books both TSMOMA and TBL&OS. But they both feel like listening to or watching the news or reading newspapers because both of them are like gossip and pulp fiction.
With the rise of chat GPT since 2022 besides these books, I'll stick to classics due to authenticity-related factors.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My Life and Shehan Karunathilaka(SK)
My navigation of life with excessive personal life failures and book reading to fight through depression is countering loneliness. The role of SK's books in this context is the hype created in the public to his books since 2010 and after the 'Booker' win. Self-help and SK are like philosophy and real life. He reveals to us the modern-day paradoxes and mysteries of real life in a dystopian manner.
My attitude toward reading anything shows that reading self-help and feeling upset for being a failure and reading SK and feeling envious of not having fun is a part of my lonely life now.
I'm not in a position to read books or at least review them. Unfortunately, I am doing it to reduce stress and to avoid my past failures and it is relaxing. And it updates my perspective.
Reading SK in 2023 and 2024 after a turbulent time since 2019 in Sri Lanka and also having a turbulent personal life as a reader unveils the readers of his books and myself as well to the realities of contemporary Sri Lanka since the 1980s.
After the Easter Sunday Bombings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic crisis Sri Lanka is with a new political leadership after 76 years since independence.
Hence Sri Lanka has many stories to tell.
SK's writing and fiction are sarcastic, witty, and haunting.
SK is many things in one. He is an author, marketer, and a musician.
He only wrote a few books. They are as follows.
(01) Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010)
(02) Chats with the Dead [CWTD] (2020) and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida [TSMOMA] (2022)
(03) The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises [TBL&OS] (2022)
SK wrote some children's books as well and the links for the relevant review are given below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My review will be mostly personal reflections and criticisms since for me reading is a personal journey inwards into the personal life of a human through another person into another perspective.
And also this review will be a combined review of his three fiction books for adults and will not analyze or review the books separately.
I have been obsessed with art since a child and I even did Art and English Literature for General Certificate of Education (G.C.E.) Ordinary Level (O/L) in the Sri Lankan education system and got through them with 'A' passes in 2007. I did G.C.E. Advanced Level (A/L) in the commerce stream in 2010 but did many co-curricular and extra-curricular activities with a dream of creating artwork in the future.
I was marginally disqualified to a Sri Lankan campus and there onwards the downward spiral of my life begins. I got depressed. Followed many courses though didn't complete many and luckily ended up in a Licensed Commercial Bank. But I did watch many films and reviewed them in a blog. So I have been more of an 'Art' fan than a studious student since 2010.
I started a blog about book reading in 2017 and there was a post about the meaning of the word booker. The link is shared below and the text is given below.
Meaning of "Booker"
The meaning of "Booker" according to Collins Dictionary is..........
noun
1. a person who hires performers or performance companies
2. a bookkeeper
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My Sri Lankan English literature experience has been very superficial since 2010 and I liked how they represented westernization, Colombo, the high society of Sri Lanka and it was revealing.
A comment on my view of a poetry collection is shared below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
My father purchased "Chinaman" in 2012 when I was doing Law in Colombo. I was depressed and kind of out of my mind those days so it was dusting in the tables and bookshelves at our home. I was not eager to read it.
My father thought it was a book about Chinese.
My copy is one of the oldest prints and one of the first editions of its kind.
I also purchased 'Chats with the Dead' (2020), the first version of TSMOMA (2022) in 2020. I wasn't eager to read it, either.
But when Shehan Karunathilaka won the Booker Prize in 2022 for his novel "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida", I was triggered to read it.
The Copy I have of "Chinaman" doesn't have all the awards it won or the praise by 'Salman Rushdie', It's that old.
Fragments of Cricket, Jokes, Philosophy, and the author's own views are visible when reading the novel.
I don't think people read after their twenties or after schooling because reading is actually boring. I was in the same mindset. But I changed with depression.
There was a certain hype for SK in Sri Lanka after the booker prize win.
Since book reading is a dying hobby and contemporaries would rather watch free YouTube, the impact of book writing on the world is obviously outdated. But since I was conditioned to reading I followed it up anyway. It was a good read. Screen time and reading have both of their shared negativities. So it's up to you to decide which is better.
I bought CWTD in 2020 just when it was released but was not interested in reading it until it won the Booker Prize in 2022 for TSMOMA.
There was an event organized by Sarsavi Bookshops - One Galle Face (OGF) branch on January 2023 and I participated in it just after the hype of 2022 Aragalaya which allowed participants to meet SK.
A brief summary of the event as a short note is given below with pictures as well.
10 am to 10. 24 am - I purchased a copy and waited in the audience until the event was set by the organizers.
10. 45 am - Shehan arrived.
Discussion points during the event
Intro. about Shehan Karunatilaka.
About the Booker Prize.
Studied English lit. Against the parent's wish.
He was interested in reading when he was young.
It is quite normal not to know what you are doing in your 20s.
1980's Sri Lankan English literature is not prominent. But after the gratien trust in the 1990 Sri Lankan English literature had a boost.
Advertising, music, and copyright have a shadow on the writing of Shehan Karunatilaka.
Fast-paced arc in the story. So much happening in the story.
Research related to the book. - > Dante's inferno, Eastern philosophy, and afterlife bureaucracy are self-made, his favorite part of writing.
Shehan's books are clearly not logical or sober sometimes. But they are narrative techniques to show you the nature of life in my opinion.
Why I think anyone would read a prize-winning book is that they know it is reviewed by the best authoritative figures globally for literature and hence it is something readable and valuable.
And I think as a Sri Lankan these books are something worthwhile.
Personal reflections on BOOKER win and SK's Fiction
It's a rare occasion according to my knowledge where a book has a rebirth with a different cover, title, and several amendments and goes to win the 'Booker' prize. It's a milestone achievement for Sri Lanka after 30 years (The English Patient)
I met SK in 2023 Jan, but read his first novel in 2023 Dec during my annual leave. I read TSMOMA in 2024 April during the Sinhala New Year holidays. SK is now a global phenomenon. Besides my life going haywire and my career at the brink of destruction as a banker, I thoroughly enjoyed the two eccentric protagonists of his two books.
The prices of the books changed drastically during the period of nomination and after the win. I purchased a copy when the book was shortlisted which was highly priced and later purchased a book at a book signing event where the prices were lower. Maybe to attract a larger readership. (Both purchased from SARASAVI)
A free illegal PDF was released and circulated on WhatsApp the day after the booker won. It improved the marketing of the book and created kind of a buzz.
Below is a post shared on SK's social media pages related to the above matter.
when I first met SK in 2023 Jan. I hadn't read any of his fiction. I was inspired and interested in his win in the Booker Prizes 2022. He was on a book tour in Sri Lanka and had a discussion in Sarasavi OGF. It was free and many other advertised book reading and discussion events were ticket based. I went on the train and went to the event and got the book signed. SK seems like a down-to-earth guy. And talented with his words. This is where I bought the lower-priced version of his book.
Chinaman and TSMOMA were read at a pivotal time in my country and my personal life. Both shed light on the current negative state of the country's violent politics and the breaking down of SLC (Sri Lanka Cricket).
Thematically I don't think SK is traditional literature and I think he is more of a contemporary figure who is changing the course of fiction.
SK rejects traditional storytelling and his trademark is innovative storytelling techniques and new narrative styles.
One of the major aspects I noticed of SK and his fiction is the clash with the traditional norms of society.
As a conservative, traditional, introvert who lives in suburban Gampaha, this novel and the protagonist was a hectic and eccentric reading experience.
As a person who reads for the sake of reading and who prefers safety and conservatism, SK is not your traditional author.
As a blind follower of self-help and also of fiction books because they reflect reality, according to Stephen Covey (Renowned self-help author) everything you do should be based on a 'win-win' situation. How I made SK's fiction reading a win-win by enjoying the language and his talented words.
What SK is doing through his fiction is unmasking Sri Lanka from his own perspective.
Many of his books reveal the cautionary nature of the human tendency to have too much fun.
The pulp literature vibe of SK is far ahead since he can mix many aspects of life and its meanings to the readers with the Sri Lankan 'third class' or petty experiences.
MOTM and TSMOMA both published in 2022 are a counter-cultural attack on the Buddhist and the religious aspects of Sri Lanka by being manipulative and independent in both history and concepts.
A review of MOTM is shared below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
As Buddhists in Sri Lanka, many tend to print Buddhist books for free as a sharing of Buddhist knowledge during Buddhist sermons at their homes. My family also did it once for an almsgiving of one of my grandparents. Many books elaborate on merits to be done to get rid of a bad birth in next life or the ways of stopping rebirth. This book is a countercultural punch for the modern and post-modern (philosophically) Buddhists and allows a rethinking of what life has to offer as a ghost through fiction.
Diaspora loves this book because of its Westernized content and the posh protagonist. And also the anti-Sri Lankan army sentiment of the novel. Sri Lankan Diaspora has increased in number with the large number of people leaving since 2020.
Readers meet the characters of Chinaman in TSMOMA.
In the book Chinaman English book and the Sinhala translation there was a slight difference in adding a picture in the inception of each chapter.
TSMOMA novel created a resurgence of the memories of my visit to Helga's Folly anti-hotel residence in Kandy, the English film Ghost (1990), the Sinhalese teledrama Giju from 1992, and the Sinhalese film U-TURN (2019).
After watching Ted-Ed videos I was exposed to the literary techniques of Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe which are also present in TSMOMA.
While being spiritual and magical about both cricket, life, and the afterlife the fiction of SK also unveils us to the negative energy that drives the Colombo urban world is magically reflected by the author in his two books. This is a great book to enjoy the sub-cultural and counter-cultural aspects of Colombo. But the length of both books is very intimidating.
Chinaman and TSMOMA do focus on the meaninglessness of our value systems.
TSMOMA is comparatively different but is kind of a cunning marketing of a Sri Lankan political disaster to sell it as a detective story and a social commentary and put SK in the global literary spotlight.
SK is a marketeer so his playing with words is obviously powerful and it is evident when reading the book.
One of the biggest problems that occurred to me during the hype of the book was did TSMOMA triggered officials to find the criminals of the Sri Lankan past?
I also drafted a story of an incident in the Sri Lankan 1980s and I really enjoyed playing cricket when I was young.
The below link is the draft of my short story.
'The Fascist'
https://daysofmylifeupdated.blogspot.......
Due to my depression, I felt alienated and TSMOMA felt mutual. During 2017 before the publication of this book I had the urge to go inside the Lionel Wendt and Galle Face Courts to check, which I actually did.
There are a lot of half-truths about places, people, and scenarios of the SL past in this book and that is the iconic style of SK.
E.g.:- Politicians, Galle face Courts, Lionel Wendt
My opinion on the 'Aragalaya' 2022 was negative. But in 2024 the results have been fulfilled by the people mandate and it shows that it was fruitful.
Many Sri Lankan artists supported the Aragalaya or the struggle during the year 2022 and SK also supported it during an interview in the US. His book reflects Sri Lankan political turmoil during the 1980's and 1990's. His booker win was dedicated to a peaceful Sri Lanka during his acceptance speech. This is the first time a Sri Lankan has won a booker price and the hype created during the year 2022 September was immense. Hence I was obsessed with the celebrity status of this writer and purchased many of his books during that period.
The below youtube video shows SK and his support for Aragalaya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wys4...
Nationalists despise this book. It was evident in many social media platforms as well as the literature circles in Sri Lanka. There were a lot of negative criticisms of this book and also blamed it for being actual literature.
below are some links.
https://www.lankaweb.com/.../booker-p...
https://www.lankaweb.com/.../booker-p...
https://www.lankaweb.com/.../seven-mo...
https://www.colombotelegraph.com/.../...
https://literaryreview.co.uk/dead-man...
book released during the Aragalaya protests in 2022 was a social protest magical realism novel depicting the dark past of SL. But it supports MR and also has a black-humor vibe.
The novel had artificial hype and a big discourse surrounding creating SK into a celebrity globally.
But in my opinion, I like his books.
When studying the narrative threads of Sri Lanka it was obvious that simple interpretations of the Sri Lankan psyche presented by SK is much more truer than Many of the other SL writers present to SL readers and audiences. Hence I feel like adding his two novels to the Sri Lankan education system would be a better to give a broader perspective for SL literature students.
purposely being superficial about Sri Lankan aspects and cultural aspects does make it unique. It's like a reflection of the Sri Lankan middle class and the high-class societies.
selfish attitudes of the Sri Lankan middle class are exposed sarcastically in this book. It was what drove the modern world after the 1950s in the local and foreign context.
The way SK drafted his characters is cartoonish and one-dimensional which makes his fiction colorful.
Controversial nature is embedded in this novel. I get the same feeling of disgust for relying on the Westernization of this novel as I felt when reading 'Thambi Mudiyanse' which was vice-versa. The link for the review of 'Thambi Mudiyanse' is shared below.
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com......
https://bookerreadsdaily.blogspot.com...
TSMOMA can be considered in the subgenre of 'queer literature'. The novel TSMOMA is not for the faint of heart. It is vulgar and scary.
Much of SK's fiction focuses on dysfunctional family dynamics which will be a very good learning experience for unmarried and younger readers during schooling and their twenties.
My Booker prize-winning reading experiences are as follows.
(01) The English Patient : Michael Ondaatje sinhalese translation as ආගන්තුක රොගියා : පරිවර්තනය : කේ. එන්. ඕ. පේරේරා
(02) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
(03) TSMOMA by SK
SK and his selling of high-priced Sri Lankan English literature books by creating a big book-selling business show his skills in bookselling. I was also attracted to this marketing.
SK does not focus on the lives of the lower tiers of Sri Lanka or the village life. Rather he only focuses on the upper middle class and high class Sri Lankan social tiers.
SK's fiction is illogical and unsober. Filled with meaninglessness. Authoritative and clear but due to the illogical nature of the story and the endless writing book becomes filled with unnecessary facts.
book exposes the readers to the worst thoughts of a human being and it shows that it would have been banned in Sri Lanka. But it is not. It is one of the darkest aspects of human nature revealed by the author.
This fiction especially TSMOMA and TBL&OS can be considered as a black hole of SK taking your positivity about being stuck in Sri Lanka away from you.
SK expands his universe in his new books both TSMOMA and TBL&OS. But they both feel like listening to or watching the news or reading newspapers because both of them are like gossip and pulp fiction.
With the rise of chat GPT since 2022 besides these books, I'll stick to classics due to authenticity-related factors.
November 27, 2022
There are several single-page stories here, which may land this way or that depending on your liking for that kind of thing. I'm not a big flash fiction fan, so the ingenuity was mostly lost on me.
The longer stories have very interesting premises, and, as most long stories do, require some world-building and/or characterization. Karunatilaka isn't very patient with telling, so he tends to use an element of the world before he tells you what it is or what exactly its significance is. This works fine on most occasions, except when the deferral is carried right till the end and an important piece of information is delivered (or admitted) on the last page. K does it to add an element of surprise, even of twist, or to change the lens through which we interpret the whole story. But at times the maneuver feels like a clumsy trick. The story titled 'Second Person' made me frown at the end for that reason, and 'The Prison Riot', otherwise a kinetic tour de force, lost a bit of its power too.
It is perhaps a comment on my reading preferences that my favorite story here, 'The Capital of Djibouti', is what might be called a standard short story - linear, plain in form, deriving its power from the particular situation it places two characters in.
The longer stories have very interesting premises, and, as most long stories do, require some world-building and/or characterization. Karunatilaka isn't very patient with telling, so he tends to use an element of the world before he tells you what it is or what exactly its significance is. This works fine on most occasions, except when the deferral is carried right till the end and an important piece of information is delivered (or admitted) on the last page. K does it to add an element of surprise, even of twist, or to change the lens through which we interpret the whole story. But at times the maneuver feels like a clumsy trick. The story titled 'Second Person' made me frown at the end for that reason, and 'The Prison Riot', otherwise a kinetic tour de force, lost a bit of its power too.
It is perhaps a comment on my reading preferences that my favorite story here, 'The Capital of Djibouti', is what might be called a standard short story - linear, plain in form, deriving its power from the particular situation it places two characters in.
January 17, 2023
It's a collection of short stories, of varying pages. I loved the one/two page stories. They had great twists. Great writing.
But I did not enjoy some of the longer stories and decided not to read the rest of them. They were witty but too dry for my liking.
But I did not enjoy some of the longer stories and decided not to read the rest of them. They were witty but too dry for my liking.
July 28, 2024
I was surprised to see that this book's publishing date predates Shehan Karunatilaka winning the Booker prize, because this collection of short stories rather feels like it was put together just to cash in on an author's new-found fame.
A couple of the longer stories are worth the read, but many of them feel a bit experimental and pointless. Shehan Karunatilaka is excellent at setting up diverse contexts and creating some unusual characters, but the plot is the issue. The format of having short one- or two-page vignettes between the longer stories also didn't work for me.
A couple of the longer stories are worth the read, but many of them feel a bit experimental and pointless. Shehan Karunatilaka is excellent at setting up diverse contexts and creating some unusual characters, but the plot is the issue. The format of having short one- or two-page vignettes between the longer stories also didn't work for me.
August 4, 2023
The seemingly effortless way these stories capture the people, voices, places, history and manner of Sri Lanka’s underbelly is remarkable.
April 14, 2024
Dry wit, sarcasm and political humour, very characteristically Shehan's writing!
March 12, 2023
Writing that is a bit too crass and graphic for my liking but some stories are excellent ! Conflict regions bring out the best stories exploring different facets of humankind !
February 3, 2023
Inconsistent, but has a few gems.
July 31, 2024
-Fertile soil for speculation-
Review of ‘The Birth Lottery and other surprises’ by Shehan Karunatilaka
The imaginative ground ‘The Birth Lottery and other surprises’ is based on could not be more different than the ground reality of Sri Lanka of today. The technological marvels of self driven cars, self driven autos (with surround airbags) and a seemingly-divine utopia that provides decades of peace after a long civil war: all these figments of speculations run through many stories of Karunatilaaka.
Although I haven’t read the author’s Booker winner book ‘The seven moons of Maali Almeida’, he is said to be known for his dry wit and humour, both which dance through these stories in full-bodied blossom. Have a look- ‘I savoured the sunsets in the hills, the meals at the club and the evenings with dusky maidens. I gambled seldom and fell to the amber nectar hardly, and thus, saved most of my generous stipend. And then I made the folly that has ruined many free men and will continue to ruin more as long as the skies are blue. I took myself a wife.’
Some stories, even as short as a single page, pack a savage punch. One of such stories, even though just one page long (short?) could be the basis of a phd thesis. It deals with the notion how even gods are riddled with the very weight of expectations.
Karunatilaka urges you to throw away the order and the sequence and read the stories in chaos because he himself does that. He even categorises his stories to suit the tastes of his readers. He classifies some of them as the stories with a twist while some of them are of the category where nothing happens. There are stories that inspire the presence of God while some allude to godlessness.
The stories are dripping with sarcasm, irony, wit and humour. The author finds a way to stick a smile on to the face of his reader, no matter how grim the skeleton of the story he is telling is. There are stories about cats in prisons and dogs on beaches. There are even animals have a philosophical conversation with Buddha. The range of imagination is simply astounding here.
The winning of Booker and the subsequent follow up with the publication of a short story collection reminds me of another BIPOC writer who did just that- Aravind Adiga. His The White Tiger was followed by a short story collection ‘Between the assassinations’ that explored the changing times between the assassinations of two Gandhi mother-son PMs. The first story from that collection, where a book seller, despite being beaten by police, doesn’t stop selling banned booked has stayed with me over the years. Adiga’s short stories, as opposed to his debut novel, looked at the humanity with an optimistic gaze, exploring the gentler sides of the humanity. Karunatilaka is in no mood to offer any such good-faith discount to the people. One of his stories, about a self-driven car (yes there are lot of these in an alternate Sri Lanka that the author imagines) that is about to crash is a vehicle that paddles how even machines, obviously programmed by humans, prefer commercial gains to saving humanity. A short story entirely written in the form of text exchanges between a husband and a wife takes bitter and sweet turns so quickly that you don’t know if what’s happening is real or a prank.
In Ceylon Islands, a corporate magnate buys islands that float near the equator between Somalia and Maldives and invites brightest of minds to build a new Sri Lanka. He wants to give an experience of Sri Lanka in a place free of Sri Lankan bureaucracy and corruption.
But there is a catch- only those of Lankan roots and blood are given a visa. The islands become most successful tourist destination of all time with an annual turnover of 300 billlion. There are hovercrafts, hot air balloons and air taxis to transport the tourists. You could smoke Bluetooth cigarettes or pop pills containing morphine, nicotine and red wine. Notice the audacity of the imagination- that never quite existed.
‘By 2028, The Ceylon Islands had been sculpted into the image of a collective dream and boasted a GDP that eclipsed Switzerland and Luxembourg, despite it still being a privately owned conglomerate.’
Alas, only if Karunatilaka’s imagination could take hold on the soil of reality. It is in this man-made utopia that a bus full of little school girls has a bomb. One of my favourite quotes is from this story- ‘How does one destroy something based on all that is good and just? It is simple. First add violence. Then add religion.’
Then there is story about a Time Machine and other futuristic weapons like gravel guns that fired pebbles to pinpoint accuracy, nigh binoculars with 100x zoom, boots that left no footprints, canisters that turned air moisture to drinkable water, boomerang daggers, elephant repellent, encryption wires and fire rocks: all crafted by Tamilian scientists working for Prabhakaran. Here the keeper of the weapons decides to use the Time Machine for himself, ignoring the warning of a general. Karunatilaka heeds the submission guidelines of Clarksworld that warns the writers to not make the time travel as easy as it is shown in tv and films. In this story, only the scholars with advanced degrees in Physics could travel through the machine or you risk getting splattered on the machine.
The stories have a fibre of darkness that sometimes is laced with wicked humour. It’s astounding how someone can find humour even in the most hopeless situations. But what does the time traveller do after he travels into the past? You must find that out.
One of the most poignant stories is set in UAE, set around the Lankan nannies hired by rich Lankan emigrants. The nannies are not called by their names but by the name of the person working before them, leat the child gets confused. It shows the human nature at its worst. The girls are beaten or not given enough food. It’s harrowing, the way the writer has woven the story around the dialogues.
Ending with the lines that resonate with the titular philosophy-‘What is God's grace? It's all just shit luck. Where we are born. Which houses we get. Nothing is planned. Everything is a sweep ticket.'
And one more- ‘Is it better to be a rich man's pampered dog or a poor man's abused child? Is human birth superior without exception to being born a beast? Is beast birth superior to plant or microbe birth? Does every creature think of itself as the centre of the universe?’
Review of ‘The Birth Lottery and other surprises’ by Shehan Karunatilaka
The imaginative ground ‘The Birth Lottery and other surprises’ is based on could not be more different than the ground reality of Sri Lanka of today. The technological marvels of self driven cars, self driven autos (with surround airbags) and a seemingly-divine utopia that provides decades of peace after a long civil war: all these figments of speculations run through many stories of Karunatilaaka.
Although I haven’t read the author’s Booker winner book ‘The seven moons of Maali Almeida’, he is said to be known for his dry wit and humour, both which dance through these stories in full-bodied blossom. Have a look- ‘I savoured the sunsets in the hills, the meals at the club and the evenings with dusky maidens. I gambled seldom and fell to the amber nectar hardly, and thus, saved most of my generous stipend. And then I made the folly that has ruined many free men and will continue to ruin more as long as the skies are blue. I took myself a wife.’
Some stories, even as short as a single page, pack a savage punch. One of such stories, even though just one page long (short?) could be the basis of a phd thesis. It deals with the notion how even gods are riddled with the very weight of expectations.
Karunatilaka urges you to throw away the order and the sequence and read the stories in chaos because he himself does that. He even categorises his stories to suit the tastes of his readers. He classifies some of them as the stories with a twist while some of them are of the category where nothing happens. There are stories that inspire the presence of God while some allude to godlessness.
The stories are dripping with sarcasm, irony, wit and humour. The author finds a way to stick a smile on to the face of his reader, no matter how grim the skeleton of the story he is telling is. There are stories about cats in prisons and dogs on beaches. There are even animals have a philosophical conversation with Buddha. The range of imagination is simply astounding here.
The winning of Booker and the subsequent follow up with the publication of a short story collection reminds me of another BIPOC writer who did just that- Aravind Adiga. His The White Tiger was followed by a short story collection ‘Between the assassinations’ that explored the changing times between the assassinations of two Gandhi mother-son PMs. The first story from that collection, where a book seller, despite being beaten by police, doesn’t stop selling banned booked has stayed with me over the years. Adiga’s short stories, as opposed to his debut novel, looked at the humanity with an optimistic gaze, exploring the gentler sides of the humanity. Karunatilaka is in no mood to offer any such good-faith discount to the people. One of his stories, about a self-driven car (yes there are lot of these in an alternate Sri Lanka that the author imagines) that is about to crash is a vehicle that paddles how even machines, obviously programmed by humans, prefer commercial gains to saving humanity. A short story entirely written in the form of text exchanges between a husband and a wife takes bitter and sweet turns so quickly that you don’t know if what’s happening is real or a prank.
In Ceylon Islands, a corporate magnate buys islands that float near the equator between Somalia and Maldives and invites brightest of minds to build a new Sri Lanka. He wants to give an experience of Sri Lanka in a place free of Sri Lankan bureaucracy and corruption.
But there is a catch- only those of Lankan roots and blood are given a visa. The islands become most successful tourist destination of all time with an annual turnover of 300 billlion. There are hovercrafts, hot air balloons and air taxis to transport the tourists. You could smoke Bluetooth cigarettes or pop pills containing morphine, nicotine and red wine. Notice the audacity of the imagination- that never quite existed.
‘By 2028, The Ceylon Islands had been sculpted into the image of a collective dream and boasted a GDP that eclipsed Switzerland and Luxembourg, despite it still being a privately owned conglomerate.’
Alas, only if Karunatilaka’s imagination could take hold on the soil of reality. It is in this man-made utopia that a bus full of little school girls has a bomb. One of my favourite quotes is from this story- ‘How does one destroy something based on all that is good and just? It is simple. First add violence. Then add religion.’
Then there is story about a Time Machine and other futuristic weapons like gravel guns that fired pebbles to pinpoint accuracy, nigh binoculars with 100x zoom, boots that left no footprints, canisters that turned air moisture to drinkable water, boomerang daggers, elephant repellent, encryption wires and fire rocks: all crafted by Tamilian scientists working for Prabhakaran. Here the keeper of the weapons decides to use the Time Machine for himself, ignoring the warning of a general. Karunatilaka heeds the submission guidelines of Clarksworld that warns the writers to not make the time travel as easy as it is shown in tv and films. In this story, only the scholars with advanced degrees in Physics could travel through the machine or you risk getting splattered on the machine.
The stories have a fibre of darkness that sometimes is laced with wicked humour. It’s astounding how someone can find humour even in the most hopeless situations. But what does the time traveller do after he travels into the past? You must find that out.
One of the most poignant stories is set in UAE, set around the Lankan nannies hired by rich Lankan emigrants. The nannies are not called by their names but by the name of the person working before them, leat the child gets confused. It shows the human nature at its worst. The girls are beaten or not given enough food. It’s harrowing, the way the writer has woven the story around the dialogues.
Ending with the lines that resonate with the titular philosophy-‘What is God's grace? It's all just shit luck. Where we are born. Which houses we get. Nothing is planned. Everything is a sweep ticket.'
And one more- ‘Is it better to be a rich man's pampered dog or a poor man's abused child? Is human birth superior without exception to being born a beast? Is beast birth superior to plant or microbe birth? Does every creature think of itself as the centre of the universe?’
May 25, 2023
I’ve been meaning to read Shehan Karunatilaka ever since I heard him speak at the DLF this year (was that only this year? January feels so long ago! 😱). I’ve been feeling pumped about short stories and essays post Sister Library x Sehri Tales so I figured this would be a good place to start. It virtually made a small mushroom cloud go off in my brain. Teeny tiny tales about terrifying people doing terrible things, sprinkled with twists and unexpected moments of positivity, this hard-to-categorize collection is a gift that keeps giving…but demands much as well. Karunatilaka is a deeply political writer, whether he’s talking Tamil-Sinhala conflict or gender battles within an office context. He’s also wickedly funny, although the punchline is not so much ‘haha’ as ‘I cannot believe he went there’. From the perspective of a Sehri Tales writer, I absolutely loved his bold experiments with microfiction, and I hope my brain picked up some cool new tools. Two thumbs up
November 17, 2022
You need writers like Karunatilaka to push the boundaries of fictional storytelling, lest it stagnates into age-told styles. His new book of short fiction: ‘The Birth Lottery and other surprises’ imbibes a witty and uncanny tone to present a body of work that is a massive fodder for sustained thought.
Karunatilaka takes an expertise in disguising all sorts of uncomfortable innings of life as bite-sized humorous anecdotes. He channelizes his apt attention to a paradoxical, dystopian ugliness that prevails all around us, once we lift the veil of convention. As a result, his stories jump out of the page with astonishing puzzlement, where the reader needs to engage in multiple rounds of observation to get the bottom of the story’s point. He seldom tries to make the stories simple to ease out the reading process. Rather, he inculcates a large number of bizarre elements into his stories, which swiftly move in and out of reality and its peripheries.
It takes a while to grasp’s Karunatilaka’s intention behind a majority of the stories. Most of them employ humour to convey something harsh, sarcasm to show light to a hypocrisy, and even straightforwardness to flatten some silly hype. In a well-rounded sense, his book is a way of showing the readers a glimpse of life in modern day Sri Lanka, with its social, political, environmental crises. The general psychological and interpersonal riffs that plagues the world today and pushes us closer to an unflinching fallacy, gets represented in his book very directly.
With all being said, the stories are sometimes painful to understand, their wordiness often going overboard. There is a parched dryness in some of the longer stories, where the author (perhaps knowingly) strips the diction off all sorts of literary pleasantness. The intense difficulty to understand the stories weighs in against the pleasure of consuming the book well. The ‘dark humour’ isn’t always executed with sufficient maturity, and many allegorical aspects of the stories are misplaced.
Thanks Hachette India for the copy.
Karunatilaka takes an expertise in disguising all sorts of uncomfortable innings of life as bite-sized humorous anecdotes. He channelizes his apt attention to a paradoxical, dystopian ugliness that prevails all around us, once we lift the veil of convention. As a result, his stories jump out of the page with astonishing puzzlement, where the reader needs to engage in multiple rounds of observation to get the bottom of the story’s point. He seldom tries to make the stories simple to ease out the reading process. Rather, he inculcates a large number of bizarre elements into his stories, which swiftly move in and out of reality and its peripheries.
It takes a while to grasp’s Karunatilaka’s intention behind a majority of the stories. Most of them employ humour to convey something harsh, sarcasm to show light to a hypocrisy, and even straightforwardness to flatten some silly hype. In a well-rounded sense, his book is a way of showing the readers a glimpse of life in modern day Sri Lanka, with its social, political, environmental crises. The general psychological and interpersonal riffs that plagues the world today and pushes us closer to an unflinching fallacy, gets represented in his book very directly.
With all being said, the stories are sometimes painful to understand, their wordiness often going overboard. There is a parched dryness in some of the longer stories, where the author (perhaps knowingly) strips the diction off all sorts of literary pleasantness. The intense difficulty to understand the stories weighs in against the pleasure of consuming the book well. The ‘dark humour’ isn’t always executed with sufficient maturity, and many allegorical aspects of the stories are misplaced.
Thanks Hachette India for the copy.
July 19, 2023
The book starts with a very interesting short story about a self-driving car’s thoughts right before an inevitable crash. There are a few one-page tales that I liked as well, but some were off-the-mark. I loved the method of storytelling in a few stories where the writing style is unconventional and fun (e.g., a series of text messages between spouses, or the thoughts of a machine).
If I were asked to name any favorites, I’d pick ‘My Name is Not Malini’ and ‘Assassin’s Paradise’. I loved those two!
However, the stories in the middle did absolutely nothing for me. If I could make a ratio of good to bad stories, I would say it’s a 50-50, which is not particularly great for a collection of short stories.
To add a little more criticism, I felt that the women in all the stories are either objects in the background or sprinkled like a few grains of pepper to spice up the plot. The women in a lot of these stories are cunning, conniving, slut-shaming working women, uninteresting housewives, ‘slutty’ minors who dirty-talk with older men, prostitutes, or someone men would just wank off to. The men, in comparison, seem to be written more interestingly.
All in all, if you’re looking for a good collection of short stories, there are better ones out there. This one, you can miss.
If I were asked to name any favorites, I’d pick ‘My Name is Not Malini’ and ‘Assassin’s Paradise’. I loved those two!
However, the stories in the middle did absolutely nothing for me. If I could make a ratio of good to bad stories, I would say it’s a 50-50, which is not particularly great for a collection of short stories.
To add a little more criticism, I felt that the women in all the stories are either objects in the background or sprinkled like a few grains of pepper to spice up the plot. The women in a lot of these stories are cunning, conniving, slut-shaming working women, uninteresting housewives, ‘slutty’ minors who dirty-talk with older men, prostitutes, or someone men would just wank off to. The men, in comparison, seem to be written more interestingly.
All in all, if you’re looking for a good collection of short stories, there are better ones out there. This one, you can miss.
January 20, 2025
It could be me. I prefer to be immersed in longer works than flip through short stories, esp. flash, which constituted a chunk of this collection. But no, I’ve also loved many shorts in the past. So maybe, it’s this book, a slim collection that is so lacklustre I could not finish even with the end in sight.
I did like the flashes of morbid humor, the frank assessment of the ills of society, the merging of the past, present and the imaginary—the hallmark of Karunatilaka’s fiction that made Seven Moons shine. The author likely had a lot of fun writing these stories. He might not have cared as much about his readers.
2.5 rounded down because I dropped this.
I did like the flashes of morbid humor, the frank assessment of the ills of society, the merging of the past, present and the imaginary—the hallmark of Karunatilaka’s fiction that made Seven Moons shine. The author likely had a lot of fun writing these stories. He might not have cared as much about his readers.
2.5 rounded down because I dropped this.
August 6, 2023
I was thinking back to Bazaar of Broken Dreams while reading this. It's not that the stories are similar but just the mastery over short stories was comparable in my mind to Stephen King's. Shehan keeps it even more vibrant by playing further with the form - one pagers, the sequence of edits of the introduction of a fictional book through the ages and others, which serve brilliantly in capturing a political and social snapshots which would come from a conscientious being observing the people and changes of his time. As Writers should. Recommended.
May 23, 2025
A mix bag of candies - There were few stories which were absolutely brilliant both as a concept as well as its execution. But then there were some which had very bizarre endings. And finally ones which felt were written with extremely low effort. The central theme of Sri Lanka binds these stories (at least most of them) and will give a glimpse on the political situation there. But then there were some which just appreciated life in a very lazy manner. Overall, it was a good read. Isn't the cover also stunning?
February 24, 2023
The first book by this author that I read recently was- The Seven moons of Malaai Almeida. That book was more serious about the devastation caused by war in Sri Lanka.
The short stories in this book are also a reflection on the political, cultural and historical conditions of Sri Lanka. There are many with twists like the birth lottery, small miracles, nobody cares. I particularly loved the small snippets
The short stories in this book are also a reflection on the political, cultural and historical conditions of Sri Lanka. There are many with twists like the birth lottery, small miracles, nobody cares. I particularly loved the small snippets
January 30, 2025
Collection of short stories without a unifying topic are always difficult to read. So is this. Some of the stories are 5 stars, some are 1. And it's hard to find out what's what so you read a lot of stuff you don't really want to read or like.
So average of one and five is three, minus one for the disappointment in reading stories you don't want to read.
So average of one and five is three, minus one for the disappointment in reading stories you don't want to read.
October 4, 2025
A nice collection of short stories from Sri Lanka. Karunatilaka is considered one of the best contemporary authors of this generation and ever since I travelled to Sri Lanka, I wanted to explore their literature. This collection of short stories, I feel is a good starting point for anyone is looking to expand their reading and discover new South Asian authors
December 22, 2022
A collection of hilarious and thought-provoking short stories by Shehan K right after winning his Booker award.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
January 21, 2023
Excellent selection of a wide range of short stories set in Sri Lanka - funny, tragic, horrifying, educational and informative. I'm finding Karunatilaka's writing to be unusual and fascinating.
March 6, 2023
In this collection of short stories, some of the one/two page stories had good twists and are an interesting read. The long ones are quite vague. Overall it was not engaging.
March 17, 2023
The stories are very different, bringing in perspectives you never usually imagine. Except for the heavy reliance on crude sexual references, it's a very fresh read.
July 24, 2023
Shehan’s style of writing is innovative . Helps you look at the scenes from different lens . Delightful, always surprising and at times disgusting
September 24, 2023
Wity, but the author has written better books. Thus, had higher hopes.
June 8, 2025
A masterpiece by a true Sri Lankan. The author has blended every element of life from that remarkable land in the Indian Ocean into one powerful mix.
November 7, 2025
Another cool book from the author. Definitely worth reading. If you haven't read anything from him better start from "Seven moons..."
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