Sh.Karunatilaka: I hope we can learn this from the stories permeated by our experiences | Culture

Is Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel regarding ghosts? Yes, replies Saulius Repečka, editor-in-chief of the Writers’ Union publishing house. Because ghosts are a big part of our lives. We are so created by them that we live among them. Those ghosts are our thoughts, from which comes the great desire to improve the world. As we know, this desire usually ends in murder.

This is what Karunatilaka is talking regarding – regarding his war-torn homeland, regarding suffering people. True, he chooses a unique depiction based on Sri Lankan folklore. His hero, Malis Almeida, a war photographer and incorrigible freethinker, wakes up dead. He is given seven days in an intermediate state to find out who killed him.

Personal archive photo/Shehan Karunatilaka

As a photographer, he has seen all sides of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war. The “ghostly”, ironically humorous, magically realistic way of representation is usually chosen by writers when the usual means of depicting reality are no longer possible.

After receiving an excited call from his literary agents and hearing that his second novel, The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida, had been entered into the 2022 longlist. shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Shehan Karunatilaka felt flattered, but didn’t worry too much regarding it.

Colombo-based Sri Lankan writer Karunatilaka had more pressing concerns at the time. He took the children to school while his wife waited in line for gas for four days – such was the harsh reality of daily life during Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis in seven decades.

The country of 22 million people has run out of food, fuel and medicines due to the government’s mismanagement of finances and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit the tourism sector hard. When we spoke, the inflation rate exceeded 50 percent, the country was running out of foreign currency and unable to pay for even the most essential imported products.

Anyway, Karunatilaka was finally announced as the winner of the prestigious 53-year-old literary prize. Time magazine journalist Armani Sved spoke with the writer regarding the unexpected award and how the brutal Sri Lankan civil war of the time has connections with the current political struggle and economic difficulties.

– How were the last 48 hours for you?

– The phone was ringing, ringing, ringing all night long. I got a lot of loving messages, which is great. Of course, I had to do a lot of interviews and take a lot of photos, but I got a little more sleep last night, and sleep is a great cure for everything. And finally I called my mother, my agent, my children.

– Your book entered the long list in July, how did you assess your chances of becoming a laureate at that time?

– I had a long way to go until I wrote “The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida” and found publishers for it in the United Kingdom, so I was understandably happy when the novel made it to the long list. However, as you know, things were turning upside down in Sri Lanka at that time. In July there were big protests, argalaja [„kova“ sinhalų kalba – čia ir toliau laužtiniuose skliaustuose leidinio „Time“ pastabos]the president stepped down and so on.

Writing a book is not like a movie premiere, when it is released and accompanied with fanfare, it is born slowly, and then you have to hope that it will find readers. Anyway, at that time I thought: wow, now the novel will at least get more attention, following all, the whole world is just watching what is happening in Sri Lanka. Later, the book was also on the short list, it was like: what the hell, great, let’s continue the party.

The life of a writer is such that it is better to be prepared in advance for possible disappointments, because they are usually not lacking. The night of the prize-winner announcement was really nerve-wracking – I was hoping to toast someone else’s health and go home, and then I heard that my book was being announced. Everything seemed quite surreal.

– What was the starting point for writing “The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida”?

– The end of the civil war in 2009. This war lasted the whole lifetime of my generation. It seemed to go on forever. Later, there was a debate regarding how it might have happened that 40,000 civilians were killed in the final phase of this war. I thought I’d let the dead speak on this subject, because the living don’t have the slightest idea regarding it. That was my starting point.

– How did you manage to portray Malis Almeidas in such a convincing way?

– I based this character on a real person, Richard de Zoysa, who was murdered in the 1990s. He was from Colombo, a middle-class English-speaking activist whose murder case remains unsolved to this day. However, Mali later turned into a war photographer and gambler. They are also connected by the fact that both were secretly gay – in what was then Sri Lanka in 1989. gays might only be that – secretive.

Also, in the book, he has worked for all parties. He has photographed the “Tamil Tigers”, the Sri Lankan army and Marxists. With such a character, I can talk regarding the different political groups in Sri Lanka at that time and create the mystery of the murder as it happened, because any of those people might have wanted him dead.

– You have previously talked regarding a certain self-censorship that you applied when writing some of your short stories. How does the political climate affect your work and that of other writers?

– We are always careful in Sri Lanka. We are now living in moments of freedom of expression where people are shouting everything they can regarding the ruling party in the streets and killing it with jokes on the internet. However, this was far from always the case.

Ten years ago, the climate was completely different. Lasantha Wickrematunge, the cult editor of the English weekly “Sunday Leader” editor, was shot in broad daylight. There was a widespread attitude “you’d better not say this, don’t write that, otherwise you’ll get a white van coming and grab you”, that was the reality. Journalists simply disappeared without a trace.

– What is daily life like in Sri Lanka amid the current economic crisis and what connections does it have with the civil war?

– That war ended in 2009. And while it left unhealed wounds, one side clearly won (the Tamil Tigers were crushed by the Sri Lankan armed forces in May 2009).

Suddenly, investments began to flow into the country, the construction of highways began, so at least for a while the appearance of improved infrastructure and prosperity was created. But there has been a succession of failed governments that mismanaged funds and borrowed without thinking regarding the consequences. And on top of all that, there was also a pandemic, we lost income from tourism, which fed a really large part of Sri Lankans.

I don’t know if the current crisis is related to the civil war. But everyday life has become pretty grim – so grim that people have taken to the streets because they don’t even have gas to cook. I’m lucky, I’m a freelance writer, so I stay at home, but when I look at the majority of the country’s population, I see that their survival depends on having fuel and being able to drive to work. Some people will inevitably be pushed into poverty.

– In July, then President Rajapaksa was forced to resign due to protests. Can this be considered a turning point for Sri Lanka?

– We hope that this will be a turning point. The current president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, was not popularly elected, but simply parachuted into the position (lawmakers chose Wickremesinghe to succeed Gotabaya Rajapaksa following he was forced out by protesters and fled to the Maldives, but returned in September).

Many consider him the best of all possible bad choices, but all of these men are well into their 70s and 70s, and some are even older, and they’ve presided over successive upheavals in our country.

When the Rajapaksa family was in power, it seemed unimaginable that we the people might speak up so loudly as to oust the President, the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister. Everything matured slowly, it took a good three months, so it was really an extremely important moment. Now it remains to be seen whether it will really benefit. Will we move forward with a vision? Or will the politicians continue to stuff their pockets with the money poured into the country? Will we manage the state properly?

We’ve had a lot of incompetent managers, and my life has been spent mostly under just such, so I’m a little apprehensive regarding whether my hopes will really be justified. However, I hope that some steps will be taken to prevent the situation from escalating further.

– How do you expect the life of your book to develop in the long term? What effect will it have?

– I hope that the novel will be classified as magical fiction and will still be reprinted – following all, these are far from self-evident things. If in twenty years the situation in our country remains the same as it is now, I will feel tragic. I write magical books with ghosts and demons, and people say, “Ah, that’s just how Sri Lanka is now.”

I would like to see this book in libraries next to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. This already sounds like fantasy, but that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. That we learn this from stories, permeate our experience.

Also, the book makes it pretty clear that I’m disappointed that we don’t think of ourselves as Sri Lankans first and foremost. We still identify primarily at some level with either Sinhala Buddhists or Tamils ​​or Muslims. And following all, it would seem quite obvious that we are all simply Sri Lankans, even though we come from different backgrounds, may speak different languages ​​and believe in different things. I really hope that one day we will all realize this – maybe this book of mine will contribute to that.

The writer was interviewed by Time magazine journalist Armani Sved. The interview took place in 2022. October 19

Translated from English by Gediminas Pulokas