Features
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: a Failed Novel about a Failed People
By Dhanuka Bandara
Shehan Karunatilaka’s first novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Matthew won immediate critical and public acclaim upon its publication in 2010. The manuscript of the novel had already won the Gratiaen Prize and there was some buzz about it in the Sri Lankan critical circles even before the novel’s publication. It certainly did not disappoint, in fact it over-delivered. I remember many who thought that it was the “Great Sri Lankan Novel” and maybe it is. Chinaman went on to gain international recognition, including the Commonwealth Book Prize (2012). Unlike Karunatilaka’s first novel, his second, the Booker Prize winning, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, was first acclaimed in the West. Before it won the Booker Prize hardly anyone had read it in Sri Lanka and the book was known in a different, earlier version, Chats with the Dead.
I first heard about Karunatilaka’s great triumph on BBC. It is the first time a Sri Lankan had won the Booker Prize, excluding Michael Ondaatje whose Sri Lankan connection is pretty tenuous. From the get go I had an uneasy feeling about this novel. I heard that it was about the murder of a Sri Lankan, queer, war photographer in the 80s. It seemed to me that Karunatilaka was trying to hit all the right tropes to write the kind of postcolonial novel that the West found agreeable to their woke tastes. Karunatilaka received his precious prize from the Queen Consort, Camilla Parker who, to the best of my knowledge, has never really shown any real interest in literary endeavors, at a glitzy event whose “celebrity guest” was Dua Lipa, whose connection with the literary world is also not clear. Couple of weeks later I bought a copy of the book and started reading it, expecting it to be average at best, and found it to be an unmitigated failure as a novel in every imaginable respect; stylistically, ideologically and otherwise.
I know that there are many in Sri Lanka who have similar sentiments about the book and most of them are not willing to share them in public lest they are called, right-wing nationalists, Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists, jingoists, homophobes or worse. There is this pervasive pressure to claim that one likes the book, especially given that it comes with the approval of the supposedly erudite western critics, who know what they are doing, and the novel also seemingly espouses a political ideology that is deemed desirable in “polite” liberal circles in Colombo, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Nevertheless, needless to say, that it is important that we have an honest, and measured critical discussion about our first Booker Prize winning novel. Whether you like it or not, its historical significance is indubitable.
How did then a novel, that in my view, is a complete failure win the prestigious Booker Prize that the absolute greats of twentieth century writing had won in the past? Karunatilaka’s book confirms everything that the West has learnt about Sri Lanka in the last couple of decades; that we are a stupid, racist, sexist, homophobic people who have entirely f—ed up. Ironically enough, this is not altogether untrue. Hence the title of this piece. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a failed novel about a failed people. The failure of the book reflects our own failure. However, I found that it is repugnant to exploit the misery—self-inflicted or otherwise—of one’s own people to win accolades from the West, who in no small measure is also responsible for the mess that Sri Lanka (and the “Third World” in general) is today.
The novel opens with the dead protagonist waking up in what appears to be purgatory, or perhaps it could be better understood as “gandhabba avadiya”—an in between space where he is given “seven moons” to find out who killed him and a stash of hidden photographs of great consequence. The opening is tangibly Dantesque and Maali Almeida meets Dr. Ranee Sridharan—no doubt a fictional rendition of Rajani Thiranagama—who sort of plays Virgil to Almeida’s Dante. She appears to be some kind of gate-keeper in the afterworld. The fictionalization of Rajani Thirangama in this way seems rather distasteful, a questionable narrative choice, and rather platitudinous at that; an attempt at appealing to the NGO crowd that romanticize and venerate Rajani Thiranagama and her legacy, albeit without an iota of her courage and conviction.
This is not to diminish Rajani Thiranagama’s significance as an activist, and her death which has accorded her the status of martyrdom; rather it is Karunatilaka’s frivolous and unskilled treatment of her that I find, well, almost disrespectful. For example, look at the following section where Dr. Ranee tells the protagonist about her husband and family: “He supported me though he didn’t agree with me. He stopped all politics after I died. He’s Down There. Looking after my girls. He’s a lovely father. And I visit him in dreams and tell him whenever I can.” This kind of writing is corny, to say the least.
Karunatilaka glibly oversimplifies the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict and the youth insurrection in the 80s. The overall point appears to be as Sri Lankans we just like to murder each other. For example look at the following descriptions of abbreviations which are clearly included in the novel to make life easier for the western readership:
LTTE – The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
· Want a separate Tamil state
· Prepared to slaughter Tamil civilians and moderates to achieve this.
JVP – The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna
· Want to overthrow the capitalist state
· Are willing to murder the working class while they liberate them.
UNP – The United National Party
· Known as the Uncle Nephew Party
· In power since the late ’70s and embroiled in the above two wars.
My point is not that there isn’t any truth in these claims, rather they oversimplify and particularly so for a western readership, the civil unrest in the 80s. And these oversimplifications and generalizations help establish the larger point of the novel, which is that we are a dumb and animalistic people: “If we have an animal as a national symbol, why not a pangolin, something original that we can own.
Like many Sri Lankans, pangolins have big tongues, thick hides and small brains. They pick on ants, rats and anything smaller than them. They hide in terror when faced with bullies and get up to mischief when the lights are out. They are hundreds of thousands of years old and are plodding towards extinction.” The number of “orientalist” clichés that Karunatilaka has packed into these lines is quite impressive. We (the Sri Lankans) are primarily animals. We look like animals and act like animals. We are cowardly bullies and we are headed towards extinction. We occupy a lower rung of the evolutionary hierarchy. No doubt the discerning judges of the Booker Prize paid due attention to passages such as this and it had a determining impact on their final decision.
There are many Sri Lankan novels about the political unrest since independence: When Memory Dies (A. Sivanandan), Anil’s Ghost (Michael Ondaatje) Funny Boy (Shyam Selvadurai), Reef (Romesh Gunesekera), Moonsoons and Potholes (Manuka Wijesinghe) among others. However, it is Karunatilaka who has truly managed to cash in on the misery of his own people by coming up with the right formula. All the novels mentioned above are more or less better written, better structured and have a better reading of the civil unrest that gripped the country in the 70s and 80s, and at any rate are more compelling as novels. Sivanandan’s When Memory Dies has a particularly nuanced reading of Sri Lankan politics since independence. Yet none of them met with the critical success of Maali Almeida.
Perhaps the timing was just right for Karunatilaka’s book, or perhaps it won the acclaim that it did, because its author turns the orientalist nonsense up to twelve. While on the one hand, as I have argued above, the novel oversimplifies the causes behind the violence in the 80s, and shows us as no better than animals, it endlessly indulges in exoticization. One of the novel’s striking aspects is its superficial use of Sri Lankan mythology. Terms such as preta, bodhisattva, varam and kanatte keep coming up over and over again and sometimes for no reason at all.
Consider for a moment the following sentence: “Forgotten smiles and bewildered eyes flutter in the air as the lorry turns into the kanatte” (224). Karunatilaka here appears to deliberately try to make the novel exotic and esoteric. What else could it be? After all there is a perfectly good English word for kanatte which we all know and use. Here is another example: “The man changes his shirt and walks to the bus stop. He jokes with the boy at the cigarette kade and takes the number 134 bus into Colombo.” What on earth is a “cigarette kade”? As an occasional smoker myself I know for a fact that there are no cigarette kades. There are petti kades that sell cigarettes though. If Karunatilaka’s attempt here is to add a “local flavor” to his writing—fatuous as it is—he should at least get his lingo right.
In a novel that trashes Sri Lankans for being Sri Lankan, the only characters who are portrayed in a positive light, with an ethical consciousness and as free agents are those who belong to Colombo’s liberal, English speaking upper middle-class: the protagonist himself, his lover, Dilan Dharmendran (DD) and his friend Jaki. None of these narrative choices are accidental, if anything they are clichés. The only good people in this country, and possibly elsewhere, who are not racist, sexist or homophobic are the westernized liberal middle-class. By now, I’m old enough to know that this is the sort of nonsense that gets you to places. The question then is how are we to come to terms with Maali Almeida? Our first bona fide Booker Prize winning novel.
I have been careful to point out above that, in the final analysis, what Karunatilaka is saying about Sri Lankans is not even altogether untrue. It is true that racism, sexism and our utter collective stupidity have wrecked this country. We are today a defeated, humiliated, and impotent people and many of us are struggling to leave the country altogether. Therefore, I suggest that we understand the failure of Maali Almeida as our own failure. The failure of Maali Almeida, and the failure of Shehan Karunatilaka, reflects the failure of Sri Lanka as a nation, and as a people. I think it is with the acceptance of this reality that we would be able to redeem ourselves as a people, and hopefully someday produce a decent novel or two. After all, the beginning of wisdom is the realization that one is one’s own problem.
The perceptive commentator seeking to make some sense of social and economic developments within most Southern countries today has no choice but to revisit, as it were, that classic on post-colonial societies, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ by Frantz Fanon. Decades after the South’s initial decolonization experience this work by the Algerian political scientist of repute remains profoundly relevant.
The fact that the Algeria of today is seeking accountability from its former colonizer, France, for the injustices visited on it during the decades of colonial rule enhances the value and continuing topicality of Frantz’s thinking and findings. The fact that the majority of the people of most decolonized states are continuing to be disempowered and deprived of development should doubly underline the significance of ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ as a landmark in the discourse on Southern questions. The world would be erring badly if it dismisses this evergreen on decolonization and its pains as in any way outdated.
Developments in contemporary China help to throw into relief some of the internal ‘structural deficiencies’ that have come to characterize most Southern societies in current times. However, these and many more ‘structural faults’ came to the attention of the likes of Fanon decades back.
It is with considerable reservations on their truthfulness that a commentator would need to read reports from the US’ Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on developments in China, but one cannot approach with the same skepticism revelations on China by well-known media institutions such as Bloomberg News.
While an ODNI report quoted in this newspaper on March 25th, 2025, elaborated on the vast wealth believed to have been amassed by China’s contemporary rulers and their families over the years, Bloomberg News in a more studied manner said in 2012, among other things, on the same subject that, ‘Xi’s extended family had amassed assets totaling approximately $376 million, encompassing investments in sectors like rare earth minerals and real estate. However, no direct links were established between these assets and Xi or his immediate family.’
Such processes that are said to have taken hold in China in post- Mao times in particular are more or less true of most former colonies of the South. A clear case in point is Sri Lanka. More than 75 years into ‘independence’ the latter is yet to bring to book those sections of its ruling class that have grown enormously rich on ill-gotten gains. It seems that, as matters stand, these sections would never be held accountable for their unbounded financial avarice.
The mentioned processes of exploitation of a country’s wealth, explain in considerable measure, the continuing underdevelopment of the South. However, Fanon foresaw all these ills and more about the South long ago. In ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ he speaks insightfully about the ruling classes of the decolonized world, who, having got into the boots of the departing colonizers, left no stone unturned to appropriate the wealth of their countries by devious means and thereby grow into the stratum described as ‘the stinking rich.’
This is another dimension to the process referred to as ‘the development of underdevelopment.’ The process could also be described as ‘How the Other Half Dies’. The latter is the title of another evergreen piece of research of the seventies on the South’s development debacles by reputed researcher Susan George.
Now that the Non-aligned Movement is receiving some attention locally it would be apt to revisit as it were these development debacles that are continuing to bedevil the South. Among other things, NAM emerged as a voice of the world’s poor. In fact in the seventies it was referred to as ‘The trade union of the poor.’ Accordingly, it had a strong developmental focus.
Besides the traditional aims of NAM, such as the need for the South to keep an ‘equidistance’ between the superpowers in the conduct of its affairs, the ruling strata of developing countries were also expected to deliver to their peoples equitable development. This was a foremost dimension in the liberation of the South. That is, economic growth needed to be accompanied by re-distributive justice. In the absence of these key conditions no development could be said to have occurred.
Basing ourselves on these yardsticks of development, it could be said that Southern rulers have failed their peoples right through these decades of decolonization. Those countries which have claimed to be socialistic or centrally planned should come in for the harshest criticism. Accordingly, a central aim of NAM has gone largely unachieved.
It does not follow from the foregoing that NAM has failed completely. It is just that those who have been charged with achieving NAM’s central aims have allowed the Movement to go into decline. All evidence points to the fact that they have allowed themselves to be carried away by the elusive charms of the market economy, which three decades ago, came to be favoured over central planning as an essential of development by the South’s ruling strata.
However, now with the returning to power in the US of Donald Trump and the political Right, the affairs of the South could, in a sense, be described as having come full circle. The downgrading of USAID, for instance, and the consequent scaling down of numerous forms of assistance to the South could be expected to aggravate the development ills of the hemisphere. For instance, the latter would need to brace for stepped-up unemployment, poverty and social discontent.
The South could be said to have arrived at a juncture where it would need to seek ways of collectively advancing its best interests once again with little or no dependence on external assistance. Now is the time for Southern organizations such as NAM to come to the forefront of the affairs of the South. Sheer necessity should compel the hemisphere to think and act collectively.
Accordingly, the possibility of South-South cooperation should be explored anew and the relevant institutional and policy framework needs to be created to take on the relevant challenges.
It is not the case that these challenges ceased to exist over the past few decades. Rather it is a case of these obligations being ignored by the South’s ruling strata in the belief that externally imposed solutions to the South’s development questions would prove successful. Besides, these classes were governed by self- interest.
It is pressure by the people that would enable their rulers to see the error of their ways. An obligation is cast on social democratic forces or the Centre-Left to come to center stage and take on this challenge of raising the political awareness of the people.
On the morning of 21 March, 2025, a Chinese-built K-8 jet trainer aircraft of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) crashed at Wariyapola. Fortunately, the two pilots ejected from the aircraft and parachuted down to safety.
A team of seven has been appointed to investigate the accident. Their task is to find the ‘cause behind the cause’, or the root cause. Ejecting from an aircraft usually has physical and psychological repercussions. The crew involved in the crash are the best witnesses, and they must be well rested and ready for the accident inquiry. It is vital that a non-punitive atmosphere must prevail. If the pilots believe that they are under threat of punishment, they will try to withhold vital information and not reveal the truth behind what happened, prompting their decision to abandon the stricken aircraft. In the interest of fairness, the crew must have a professional colleague to represent them at the Inquiry.
2000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Cicero said that “To err is human.” Alexander Pope said, “To err is human. To forgive, divine.” Yet in a Royal Air Force (RAF) hangar in the UK Force (RAF) hangs a sign declaring: “To err is human. To forgive is not RAF policy” These are the two extremes.
Over the years, behavioural scientists have observed that errors and intelligence are two sides of the same coin. In other words, an intelligent human being is liable to make errors. They went on to label these acts of omission and commission as ‘Slips, Lapses, Mistakes and Violations’.
To illustrate the point in a motoring context, if one was restricted to driving at a speed limit of 100 kph along an expressway and the speed crept up to 120 kph, then it is a ‘Slip’ on one’s part. If you forgot to fasten the seatbelt, it is a ‘Lapse’. While driving along a two-lane road, if a driver thinks in his/her judgement that the way is clear and tries to overtake slower traffic on the road, using the opposite lane, then encounters unanticipated opposite traffic and is forced to get back to the correct lane, that is a ‘Mistake’. Finally, if a double line is crossed while overtaking, while aware that the law is being broken, that is labelled as a ‘Violation’. In theory, all of the above could be applied to flying as well.
In the mid-Seventies, Elwyn Edwards and Frank Hawkins proposed that good interaction between Software (paperwork), Hardware (the aircraft and other machines), Liveware (human element) and the (working) environment are the essentials in safe flight operations. Labelled the ‘SHELL’ concept, it was adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. (ICAO). (See Diagram 01)
In diagram 01, two ‘L’s depict the ‘Liveware’, inside and outside an aircraft flightdeck. The ‘L’ at the centre is the pilot in command (PIC), who should know his/her strengths and weaknesses, know the same of his/her crew, aircraft, and their mission, and, above all, be continuously evaluating the risks.
Finally, Prof. James Reason proposed the Swiss Cheese Theory of Accident Causation. (See Diagram 02)
From this diagram we see that built in defences in a system are like slices of Swiss cheese. There are pre-existing holes at random which, unfortunately, may align and allow the crew at the ‘sharp end’ to carry out a procedure unchecked.
Although it is easy and self-satisfying to blame a crew, or an individual, at an official accident investigation, what should be asked, instead, is why or how the system failed them? Furthermore, a ‘just culture’ must prevail.
The PIC and crew are the last line of defence in air safety and accident prevention. (See Diagram 3)
A daily newspaper reported that it is now left to be seen whether the crash on 21 March was due to mechanical failure or pilot error. Why is it that when a judge makes a wrong judgement it is termed ‘Miscarriage of Justice’ or when a Surgeon loses a patient on the operating table it is ‘Surgical Misadventure’, but when a pilot makes an honest error, it is called ‘Pilot Error’? I believe it should be termed ‘Human Condition’.
Even before the accident investigation had started, on 23 March, 2025, Minister of Civil Aviation, Bimal Ratnayake, went on record saying that the Ministry of Defence had told him the accident was due to an ‘athweradda’ (error). This kind of premature declaration is a definite ‘no-no’ and breach of protocol. The Minister should not be pre-empting the accident enquiry’s findings and commenting on a subject not under his purview. Everyone concerned should wait for the accident report from the SLAF expert panel before commenting.
God bless the PIC and crew!
– Ad Astrian
Yes, it’s happening tomorrow, Friday (28th), and Saturday (29th,) and what makes this scene extra special is that you don’t need to rush and pack your travelling bags and fork out a tidy sum for your airfare to Thailand.
The Thai Street Food Festival, taking place at Siam Nivasa, 43, Dr. CWW Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 7, will not only give you a taste of Thai delicacies but also Thai culture, Thai music, and Thai dancing.
This event is being organised by the Thai Community, in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo.
The Thai Community has been very active and they make every effort to promote Amazing Thailand, to Sri Lankans, in every possible way they can.
Regarding the happening, taking place tomorrow, and on Saturday, they say they are thrilled to give Sri Lankans the vibrant Thai Street Food Festival.
Explaining how Thai souvenirs are turned out
I’m told that his event is part of a series of activities, put together by the Royal Thai Embassy, to commemorate 70 years of diplomatic relations between Thailand and Sri Lanka.
At the Thai Street Food Festival, starting at 5.00 pm., you could immerse yourself in lively Thai culture, savour delicious Thai dishes, prepared by Colombo’s top-notch restaurants, enjoy live music, captivate dance performances, and explore Thai Community members offering a feast of food and beverages … all connected with Amazing Thailand.
Some of the EXCO members of the Thai Community, in Sri Lanka,
with the Ambassador for Thailand
I’m sure most of my readers would have been to Thailand (I’ve been there 24 times) and experienced what Amazing Thailand has to offer visitors … cultural richness, culinary delights and unique experiences.
Well, if you haven’t been to Thailand, as yet, this is the opportunity for you to experience a little bit of Thailand … right here in Colombo; and for those who have experienced the real Thailand, the Thai Street Food Festival will bring back those happy times … all over again!
Remember, ENTRANCE IS FREE.
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