Video Editor: Rajbir Singh
"Failed cricketer, failed rockstar, failed vegan." These are just some of the things Shehan Karunatilaka – the winner of the 2022 Booker Prize – has to say about himself.
The 47-year-old became only the second Sri Lankan to bag the prestigious prize, along with the £50,000 that comes with it, for his metaphysical ghost story, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, set in the backdrop of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war (1983-2009).
In an exclusive interaction with The Quint, Karunatilaka speaks about his memories of the war, Indian authors who have influenced him, self-censorship, the new book he's working on, and much more.
How did the idea of the book come about, and why did you want it to be set during the Sri Lankan civil war?
The idea came in slow increments over many years. The initial idea was, ‘Let’s write a ghost story set in Sri Lanka.’ And what are ghosts? Ghosts are dissatisfied, disgruntled, angry spirits who cannot move onto the next plane and have unfinished business.
Then that tied into Sri Lanka’s many conflicts and our civil war. So I thought of a ghost story in which the victims of Sri Lanka’s many tragedies could speak. So it’s a bit more than a ghost story, since there’s a historical and political element to it.
You were perhaps a teenager when the civil war began. Could you tell us what you remember from that time?
We had bomb blasts going off close-by, curfews, the city was full of checkpoints, and schools would close. I have seen burning bodies on the street. We were aware of what was going on, but we were insulated. The people who lived in Jaffna and Batticaloa suffered much more as they were living on the frontlines.
Also, since I was a teenager, I wasn’t really reading the newspaper apart from reading the cricket score, so I wasn’t really engaged. But I saw the fear in the eyes of my parents and uncles and aunties. There was real fear and anxiety.
You also live with this trauma of knowing that you could walk out and a bomb could go off. But in Colombo, we pretended that the war was happening in another country, and it actually seemed that way.
You were born in Sri Lanka, but you’ve lived in lots of different places, like New Zealand, London, Amsterdam, and Singapore. Do you think the exposure to such a variety of places influenced you as a writer?
I suppose so. All your experiences shape the way you look at the world, and the people you meet shape the way you view characters.
I believe that travel, like reading, is a gift for writers. Even as a human being, reading and travelling make your life richer. Colombo and rural New Zealand, you can’t have more different places. So that experience drove me to libraries.
You’re also not as aware of your country when you’re living in it. I was in Iowa, United States, earlier this year, at a writers’ workshop. That’s when Sri Lanka was imploding – the protests were happening and it was looking dangerous. And I remember I was following it every day. But somehow when I’m living here (Sri Lanka) I don’t follow it.
It’s been a month since you won the Booker Prize. Now that you’ve had some time to reflect, how would you say your life has changed since the award?
Hopefully, fundamentally it won’t change. I’m still going to hang out with my family, hang out in my room typing all day.
I used to spend all my time in my room, reading and writing and playing music. But now, suddenly, everyone wants to talk to me. Not just journalists, but also agents, publishers, publicists, and lawyers. So it’s a bit strange.
But I understand how big this thing is. I’ve won prizes in the past but this is the big one. It looks like I’ll just be on planes for the next 12 months, going to literature fests.
I’m also not used to having a huge readership. It means that financially I’m going to benefit from it, and I can write a second or third book. So now I have a career. I didn’t think I had one when I had just written one book.
But I’m not going to buy a fancy car or a yacht and start drinking champagne for breakfast.
What can you tell us about the book you’re working on right now?
It’s bad luck to talk about stuff that hasn’t been written. That’s something I learnt quite early on. When you talk about it, you’re not going to write it or you’re going to write it differently.
All I can say is, it’ll be about Sri Lanka. There aren’t going to be many ghosts or cricket or politics or drunks – the things that I’ve written about before. It’ll be a different sort of book, maybe a bit lighter than Seven Moons, which was a very heavy book with a lot of spirituality, violence, and politics.
Have any Indian authors influenced your writing?
Certainly. On a subcontinental level, we all were influenced by Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The book proved influential because a lot of Indians started writing in their own voice in English.
(Arundhati Roy’s) God of Small Things, (Aravind Adiga’s) White Tiger: these showed that a very local story written in a very local way could capture the world.
I also go for books that aren’t like the books that I write, stuff like Jhumpa Lahiri and Anuradha Roy.
It’s been a rich few decades for subcontinental writing!
How much of a role does self-censorship play in your writing? Especially at a time when authors who write on sensitive topics are receiving so much backlash, and in some cases even being physically attacked, like Salman Rushdie was recently?
I’m always conscious of, ‘Can I say this? Should I say this?’ So, yes, I am very careful.’
Maybe according to western standards, I should be saying whatever is in my heart, but I’m not that naïve.
We didn’t grow up with the idea that you can go out and say anything, because it was very dangerous – speaking the truth. Journalists were killed in broad daylight, and they disappeared. So you’re always aware of the fact that you could offend someone and it’s not like you’re just going to go to court. It could have repercussions for you.
Writing is important, but your safety and your family are more important. So I don’t try to consciously pick fights.
On your website you’ve called yourself a ‘failed rockstar.’ But you’ve played the bass guitar in a couple of bands. Do you see yourself pursuing music as more than a hobby in the future?
I spend my money on instruments that I don’t play enough. But I play music as a writing tool. When I take a break (from writing), I go and have a jam and play some chords. But I’m not very talented and I’m not as dedicated to music as I am to writing. You need to play everyday to become a proper musician.
But maybe I’ll get there. I might get my old friends together and play some Pink Floyd covers in the garage, like old men do! For me, music is good for mental health, good for the soul. And I’ve got kids in the house, so I like to share the gift of music.
And I’m sure there will always be music in my life. I’m sure I’ll be 80 years old and I’ll say, ‘Come on, let’s get the band together, and let’s release one single or one album.’
With a change in the Sri Lankan government, is life slowly coming back to normal in Sri Lanka?
We are still in an economic crisis. It’s a lot more stable that it was 3-4 months ago, which is not saying much, but we are grateful for that. When I got the news of the Booker longlist, we were in a petrol queue, we had had nationwide protests, and we had presidents fleeing.
I’m wary about making such predictions. I mean, what is normal in Sri Lanka? Which period was considered normal? Before the economic crisis, we had the Easter attacks.
I’m hopeful that we have got the right people in the right places, but with Sri Lanka, you can never tell. There are always politicians making comebacks, so who knows? But I’m hopeful that things will get stabilised and that we will have some solutions to this crisis. But It’s going to be a long way. It’s not over by a long shot.
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